(McGill-Queen's Studies in The History of Ideas 61) Sedgwick, Peter R. - Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm - Nietzsche's Justice - Naturalism in Search of An Ethics-McGill-Queen's University Press (2013)

Nietzsche’s Justice
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McGill-Queen’s s tudies in the h istory of ideas
series editor: Philip J. cercone
1 Problems of cartesianism 10 consent, coercion,

Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, and Limit:
John M. Nicholas, and John the Medieval Origins of
W. Davis Parliamentary Democracy
Arthur P. Monahan
2 the Development of the
idea of history in Antiquity 11 scottish common sense
Gerald A. Press in Germany, 1768–1800:
A contribution to the
3 claude Buffier and
history of critical Philosophy
thomas Reid:
Manfred Kuehn
two common-sense
Philosophers 12 Paine and cobbett:
Louise Marcil-Lacoste the transatlantic connection
David A. Wilson
4 schiller, hegel, and Marx:
state, society, and the Aesthetic 13 Descartes and the enlightenment
ideal of Ancient Greece Peter A. Schouls
Philip J. Kain
14 Greek scepticism:
5 John case and Aristotelianism Anti-Realist trends
in Renaissance england in Ancient thought
Charles B. Schmitt Leo Groarke
6 Beyond Liberty and Property: 15 the irony of theology and the

the Process of self- Nature of Religious thought
Recognition in eighteenth- Donald Wiebe
century Political thought
16 Form and transformation:
J.A.W. Gunn
A study in the Philosophy
7 John toland: his Methods, of Plotinus
Manners, and Mind Frederic M. Schroeder
Stephen H. Daniel
17 From Personal Duties
8 coleridge and the inspired Word towards Personal Rights:
Anthony John Harding Late Medieval and early
Modern Political thought,
9 the Jena system, 1804–5:
c. 1300–c. 1650
Logic and Metaphysics
Arthur P. Monahan
G.W.F. hegel
Translation edited by 18 the Main Philosophical
John W. Burbidge and Writings and the Novel Allwill
George di Giovanni Friedrich heinrich Jacobi
Introduction and notes by Translated and edited by
H.S. Harris George di Giovanni
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19 Kierkegaard as humanist: 29 Jacob Burckhardt and
Discovering My self the crisis of Modernity
Arnold B. Come John R. Hinde
20 Durkheim, Morals, 30 the Distant Relation:

and Modernity time and identity in spanish-
W. Watts Miller American Fiction
Eoin S. Thomson
21 the career of toleration:
John Locke, Jonas Proast, 31 Mr simson’s Knotty case:
and After Divinity, Politics, and Due
Richard Vernon Process in early eighteenth-
century scotland
22 Dialectic of Love:
Anne Skoczylas
Platonism in schiller’s
Aesthetics 32 Orthodoxy and
David Pugh enlightenment:
George campbell in
23 history and Memory
the eighteenth century
in Ancient Greece
Jeffrey M. Suderman
Gordon Shrimpton
33 contemplation
24 Kierkegaard as theologian:
and incarnation:
Recovering My self
the theology of Marie-
Arnold B. Come
Dominique chenu
25 enlightenment and Christophe F. Potworowski
conservatism in
34 Democratic Legitimacy:
Victorian scotland:
Plural Values
the career of
and Political Power
sir Archibald Alison
F.M. Barnard
Michael Michie
35 herder on Nationality,
26 the Road to egdon
humanity, and history
heath: the Aesthetics
F.M. Barnard
of the Great in Nature
Richard Bevis 36 Labeling People:
French scholars on society,
27 Jena Romanticism and its
Race, and empire, 1815–1849
Appropriation of Jakob Böhme:
Martin S. Staum
theosophy – hagiography –
Literature 37 the subaltern Appeal to
Paolo Mayer experience: self-identity,
Late Modernity, and the
28 enlightenment and community:
Politics of immediacy
Lessing, Abbt, herder, and the
Craig Ireland
Quest for a German Public
Benjamin W. Redekop
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38 the invention of Journalism 47 under conrad’s eyes:
ethics: the Path to Objectivity the Novel as criticism
and Beyond Michael John DiSanto
Stephen J.A. Ward
48 Media, Memory, and
39 the Recovery of Wonder: the First World War
the New Freedom David Williams
and the Asceticism of Power
49 An Aristotelian Account
Kenneth L. Schmitz
of induction: creating
40 Reason and self-enactment something from Nothing
in history and Politics: Louis Groarke
themes and Voices
50 social and Political Bonds:
of Modernity
A Mosaic of contrast
F.M. Barnard
and convergence
41 the More Moderate side F.M. Barnard
of Joseph de Maistre:
51 Archives and the
Views on Political Liberty
event of God:
and Political economy
the impact of Michel Foucault
Cara Camcastle
on Philosophical theology
42 Democratic society David Galston
and human Needs
52 Between the Queen
Jeff Noonan
and the cabby:
43 the circle of Rights expands: Olympe de Gouges’s
Modern Political thought Rights of Women
after the Reformation, 1521 John R. Cole
(Luther) to 1762(Rousseau)
53 Nature and Nurture in French
Arthur P. Monahan
social sciences, 1859–1914
44 the canadian Founding: and Beyond
John Locke and Parliament Martin S. Staum
Janet Ajzenstat
54 Public Passion:
45 Finding Freedom: hegel’s Rethinking the Grounds
Philosophy and the for Political Justice
emancipation of Women Rebecca Kingston
Sara MacDonald
55 Rethinking the Political:
46 When the French the sacred, Aesthetic Politics,
tried to Be British: and the collège de sociologie
Party, Opposition, and Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi
the Quest for the civil
56 Materialist ethics and
Disagreement, 1814–1848
Life-Value
J.A.W. Gunn
Jeff Noonan
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57 hegel’s Phenomenology: 59 ideas, concepts, and Reality
the Dialectical Justification of John W. Burbidge
Philosophy’s First Principles
60 the enigma of Perception
Ardis B. Collins
D.L.C. Maclachlan
58 the social history of ideas
61 Nietzsche’s Justice:
in Quebec, 1760–1896
Naturalism in search of
Yvan Lamonde
an ethics
Translated by Phyllis Aronoff
Peter R. Sedgwick
and Howard Scott
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NAtuRALisM iN seARch
OF AN ethics
Peter R. sedgwick
McGill-Queen’s university Press

Montreal & Kingston • London • ithaca
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© McGill-Queen’s university Press 2013
isbn 978-0-7735-4268-6 (cloth)
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
sedgwick, Peter R., author

Nietzsche’s justice: naturalism in search of an ethics / Peter R. sedgwick.
(McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 61)

includes bibliographical references and index.
issued in print and electronic formats.
isbn 978-0-7735-4268-6 (bound). – i s bn 978-0-7735-4269-3 (pbk.). –
isbn 978-0-7735-8983-4 (eP DF). – i s bn 978-0-7735-8984-1 (eP U B )
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900 – criticism and

interpretation. 2. Justice. 3. Naturalism. 4. ethics. i. title.
ii. series: McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 61
b3318.J87s43 2013 172'.2 c2013-904700-x

c2013-904701-8
this book was typeset by interscript in 10/12 New Baskerville.
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For Richard Schacht
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Contents
introduction 3
1 the Divine Justice of tragedy: Myth, Metaphysics, and
Modernity 16
2 the unjust Animal, the Law-Like Animal 54
3 Justice talk, community, and Power 78
4 the Punishing Animal 103
5 the Law-Giving Animal 146
6 Revaluation and Beyond 196
conclusion 219
Bibliography 227
Index 233
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Introduction
A m o n g s t t h e va r i o u s d e v e l o p m e n t s in Nietzsche criticism
one of the most striking is the “surge of interest” in the political sig-
nificance of his thought.1 there has, in the last thirty years especially,
been increasing debate concerning the political and social aspects of
Nietzsche’s writings and the possible contribution his ideas might make
to our understanding of contemporary political matters. As is often the
case with things relating to Nietzsche, this debate is marked by various
and complex forms of anxiety. some have responded to it by arguing
that Nietzsche’s thinking is devoid of any political dimension of signifi-
cance. On such an account, Nietzsche is held to be a philosopher whose
strengths lie elsewhere. he is best regarded as, for want of a better
phrase, a “pure philosopher.” such a view urges us to take Nietzsche to
be primarily concerned with, and best read in relation to, a range of
more or less traditional philosophical questions concerning things like
the nature of existence (ontology) or method (epistemology). After all,
it has been claimed, whereas he never offers us a theory concerning
the nature or legitimacy of the modern state and, because of this, cannot
be deemed a “political” or “social” thinker in any meaningful sense,
Nietzsche does offer much discussion of methodological issues that he
then applies to the task of seeking to articulate a more or less objective
analysis of values.2 this approach to Nietzsche springs from a desire to
1 see siemens, “Nietzsche’s Political Philosophy,” 509.

2 see, for example, Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality, 296: Nietzsche, it is claimed, “has no
political philosophy, in the conventional sense of a theory of the state and its legitimacy.”
he is, rather, better understood “as a kind of esoteric immoralist” who seeks to communicate
his ideas concerning the good life to “the select few.” two points regarding this view are
worth mentioning here. First, Nietzsche clearly does offer a theory concerning the state,
its origins, and the nature of political legitimacy. see, for instance, On the Genealogy of
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4 Nietzsche’s Justice
turn him into a methodologist who follows the example of the hard sci-
ences and emulates the spirit of enlightenment.3 it also allows for incon-
venient elements of the Nietzschean corpus to be set discretely to one
side. in this regard, more recent “anti-political” recuperations take their
lead from the work of the famous Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann in
his mammoth 1950 study Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist.4
Although happy to emphasize the less traditional aspects of Nietzsche’s
thought (not least his anti-christianity) Kaufmann’s interpretation seeks
to cultivate an understanding of him as a figure of enlightenment ethos
whose primary concerns are far removed from the political domain. this
may in part be because of the uncomfortable and inaccurate associa-
tion with Nazism that affixed itself to Nietzsche’s name at the time of
Kaufmann’s writing in the immediate aftermath of the second World
War. Kaufmann’s major achievement is to reveal the illusory nature of
this association, but the illusion is exposed at the cost of a depoliticized
Nietzsche held to be uninterested in society, questions of political pow-
er, or the trashy world of everyday struggles that characterize much of
human life.
Morality, ii, 17 (for some discussion of this see chapter 5). here, Nietzsche offers an ac-
count of the origins of the state: its origins are violent and tyrannical. in other words, the
state does not spring from a “contract” between equals, as classical liberal theory would like
to suggest. in turn, what we come to call “legitimacy,” for Nietzsche, has its origins in the
practical world of human life: it springs from our dominant instinct – the urge to follow
convention – and emerges as a complex tangle of habits and customs. second, the conten-
tion that Nietzsche seeks a restricted audience (a “select few”) to whom he wishes to com-
municate his notion of “human flourishing” ignores the register of Nietzsche’s writings.
Whatever he himself might on occasion claim, Nietzsche is no esoteric writer. he can be
read with profit by people with little or no formal philosophical training. it is one of the
great ironies of Nietzsche’s thought that this most anti-democratic of writers should have
been read by what must on any accounting be one of the widest and most varied audiences
ever afforded to a figure associated with the philosophical tradition. For another variant of
the attempt to de-politicize Nietzsche see Brobjer, “the Absence of Political ideals,” 300–
18. For a persuasive critical response to Brobjer see Dombowsky, “A Response to thomas
h. Brobjer.”
3 One of the most powerful articulations of this approach is offered by Maudmarie
clark in Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. clark’s contention is that Nietzsche is first and
foremost committed to applying the methodological approach of the sciences to the realm
of philosophical debate. it is this which makes him an anti-metaphysical thinker who turns
against the dominant approach associated with the Kantian postulation of the existence of
the noumenon – the realm of things-in-themselves. My interpretation places more empha-
sis than clark on history, rather than science. Nietzsche, after all, is no passive adherent to
scientific method.
4 see Kaufmann, Nietzsche.
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Introduction 5
contrary to this view, others have sought in various ways to show

how Nietzsche is foremost a political thinker. On this conception, it is
possible even to transform the overtly anti-democratic Nietzsche into a
figure capable of making a positive contribution to arguments that char-
acterize the modern political milieu. thus, recent scholarship has
explored the ways in which the overtly anti-democratic Nietzsche can
contribute even to conceptions of democracy.5 some have responded to
this enlisting of Nietzsche for democratic purposes critically but not in a
manner that simply denies the political register of Nietzsche’s thought.
such responses emphasize instead the degree to which this political reg-
ister cannot be readily translated into an endorsement of modern demo-
cratic culture in so far as it poses too radical a challenge to contemporary
political preconceptions.6 Others, in turn, argue that Nietzsche is indeed
a political thinker, but that his thought is politically unproductive and
even destructive. Pre-eminent amongst these is Jürgen habermas. For
habermas, Nietzsche is the most destructive critic of bourgeois philo-
sophy. he usurps the pre-eminence of liberal conceptions of legiti-
macy and supplants them with a philosophy of domination incapable of
making a positive contribution to modern political and social debate.
Nietzsche’s privileging of power, habermas argues, renders questions
of authority contingent and subject to an appalling arbitrariness.7
5 see J. hatab, A Nietzschean Defense, and schrift, “Nietzsche for Democracy?” see also
connolly, Political Theory and Modernity, and Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought. Warren
characterizes Nietzsche as a conservative thinker of aristocratic persuasion, but holds that
his account of power offers insights that transcend the limits of his own political views. For
an informative critical discussion of these see Don Dombowsky, “A Response to Alan D.
schrift.” For another critical account of Nietzsche’s relation to democracy see Appel,
Nietzsche contra Democracy. For Appel, anti-democratic sentiment reaches to the very core of
Nietzsche’s thought and cannot be separated from it.
6 see Dombowsky’s “A Response to Alan D. schrift.” this approach is also developed
in a manner critical of Dombowsky by Acampora, “Demos Agonistes Redux.” Acampora goes
so far as to doubt whether any form of political constitution could bear the stresses placed
upon it by what she sees as Nietzsche’s incessant demand for social antagonism. however,
she does ponder the possibility of a productive role for such an approach, in so far as it
might be possible to envisage an agonism that remains situated at the furthest limits of
a “democratic polity” (375). For further useful material on the politics of Nietzsche’s
thought, see cameron and Dombowsky, The Political Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.
7 see also in connection, Apel, “Regulative ideas or truth happening?” and “the self-
Recuperative Principle,” in From a Transcendental-Semiotic Point of View, 183–215 and 232–
43. Like habermas, Apel (a fellow member of the second generation of Frankfurt school
thinkers) sees in Nietzsche’s thought a threat to the validity of the modern conception of
critical reason. For Apel, Nietzsche seeks “to call into question absolutely all validity claims
of human reason from a genealogical point of view” which “attempts to replace under-
standing with explaining” (210). this amounts to “an attempt to reduce the normative
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Nietzsche’s thought suspends any prospect of offering an account of po-

litical legitimacy by transforming the progressive historical narrative con-
ventionally taken to ground the modern liberal state into a maelstrom
of unrestrained struggles for domination.8 On such a view, Nietzsche’s
thought aspires to occupy a position beyond law and reasonableness as it
embraces a violence that celebrates and even glorifies injustice and re-
pression.9 the habermasean view, in short, is that in so far as Nietzsche
is a thinker of power, his thought is oriented toward something inher-
ently unreasonable. unreasonableness is the epitome of partiality and
unfairness, and unfairness the hallmark of injustice. understood in this
way, Nietzsche, in so far as he is a social thinker at all, is a celebrator of
gross exploitation.10 such a view is echoed by theorist Francis J. Mootz
iii, who finds in Nietzsche a thinker who offers little comfort for the
validity claims of human reason to determining natural factors that make freedom and
normative reason to be illusions” that conceal beneath them a hidden world of “material
interests” and “will to power” (241). On such an account, historically oriented explanatory
modes of meaning are used to neutralize the “self-recuperative” (210) and irreducible
element of interpretation inherent in all acts of understanding. On my interpretation,
Nietzsche does not seek to perform quite such a radical dissolution of sense. it is, in short,
quite possible to offer a genetic account of, say, moral understanding – as Nietzsche does
in On the Genealogy of Morality – that is nevertheless non-reductive. Just because one has
elucidated the historically contingent conditions in virtue of which interpretative norms
emerge, and shown thereby the role that these conditions played (and to some extent still
play) in the constitution of understanding, it does not follow that one is committed to the
view that such understanding is fixed or even entirely characterized for all time by con-
straints imposed by the conditions from which it emerged. Nietzsche clearly thinks that
one can think the limits of these conditions – even if one cannot always escape from them.
One can offer an explanation that, even if it relativizes understanding in so far as it locates
its origins in contingency, does not simply do away with what understanding has achieved
by way of its constituting interpretative norms in the meantime. the legacy of such norms
(our presuppositions of value) is, however, now open to critical interrogation.
8 see habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.
9 in the words of Richard Rorty, habermas regards “the line of thought” exemplified
by Nietzsche as “a public danger” (“habermas, Derrida, and Philosophy,” in Truth and
Progress, 311). this view of Nietzsche has been called by Robert B. Pippin a “nearly stan-
dard characterization” (see “Nietzsche’s Alleged Farewell,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Nietzsche, 252). the view underlying the current interpretation is that Nietzsche contains
both much that is deeply insightful and much that ought to disturb us. i no more seek to
render Nietzsche a thinker who is passively amenable to our current values than i seek to
demonize him.
10 there is, as is so often the case with Nietzsche, justification for this view. consider, for
example, Beyond Good and Evil, 259, which holds that the idea of a social order whose mem-
bers refrain from causing “injury, violence, and exploitation” to one another and which is
egalitarian, denies the fundamental principle of life (this principle being life’s desire to
expand rather than contract). For some discussion of Nietzsche’s treatment of “life” see
the conclusion to the current volume.
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Introduction 7
faint-hearted. Mootz, who outlines the benefits of a hermeneutic ap-

proach to the quandaries unearthed in recent debates about the nature
of law,11 likewise holds Nietzsche’s thought to offer few panaceas. the
“Nietzschean challenge” posed to law amounts to reducing it to no more
than the play of power relations.12 Malcolm Bull likewise concentrates
on representing Nietzsche as a thinker of power and seeks thereby to
unmask a figure incapable of offering anything but a repulsive and re-
gressive political vision. For Bull, Nietzsche uses a strategy of flattering
the reader into partaking of a sense of shared participation in an exclu-
sive domain of mastery. Because of this, Nietzsche is a thinker not to be
trusted.13 One of Bull’s main points of contention is that this sense
of exclusivity feeds Nietzsche’s anti-egalitarianism.14 egalitarianism, on
Bull’s account, is Nietzsche’s chosen target as the source of european
nihilism.15 in challenging nihilism, Nietzsche sets out an influential anti-
egalitarian political agenda that favours a socially regressive return to
multiple forms of slavery.
11 see Mootz iii, “After Natural Law” 1. Mootz’s comment occurs in the context of a
discussion of stephen smith’s Law’s Quandary. smith points to the gap between legal
theory and practice. Positivistic tendencies have generated a loss of theoretical commit-
ment in the existence of “the Law,” yet legal practitioners act in their daily lives as if such a
thing exists.
12 in spite of such reservations, however, the burgeoning interest in this aspect of
Nietzsche’s thought is nevertheless reflected in a number of publications, including a sub-
stantial volume co-edited by Mootz. see Mootz iii and Goodrich, Nietzsche and Law, and
Goodrich and Valverde, Nietzsche and Legal Theory.
13 Bull, Anti-Nietzsche, 31. the issue of trust, Bull notes, is raised by Waite in Nietzsche’s
Corps/e. Waite argues that “the trust Nietzsche most betrayed is ours: namely our trust that
the object of philosophy … is the creation of concepts that are always new, when in fact
Nietzsche’s concepts were created to serve surreptitiously ideological interests and agendas
that are premodern, archaic” (23). Waite thereby urges us to discard our trust in Nietzsche,
an attitude fostered by his texts’ ability to seduce us into thinking we are amongst the
chosen “few” to whom they are addressed (see Bull, 31). One can, of course, read with
profit without trusting everything he says or numbering oneself amongst the elite reader-
ship he seeks to conjure. As i have argued elsewhere, the more “sinister” Nietzsche, one
who does not conform to our presuppositions concerning truth, politics, morality, and the
like, and is read with a certain lack of trust, can be of positive value. One need not trust him
to value him. indeed, the kind of objection to Nietzsche that depends upon trust can be
raised concerning philosophy generally, as he himself was amongst the first modern think-
ers to point out. the insidious nature of philosophy (its levels of often unwitting deception
and self-deception) is a central topic in the opening twenty or so sections of Beyond Good
and Evil.
14 Bull, Anti-Nietzsche, 162.
15 see Bull, Anti-Nietzsche, chapter 3, for an entertaining, if at times questionable, ex-
ploration of Nietzsche and nihilism.
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the kinds of tensions noted above are not unique to modern debates
about the politics of Nietzsche’s thought – or to the domain of aca-
demic discussion. the conception of Nietzsche as a politically and cul-
turally engaged figure replete with disturbing undertones versus the
image of him as an apolitical thinker primarily concerned with more or
less “harmless” traditional questions concerning the nature of exis-
tence or questions of method has framed critical and not-so-critical
discussion of his writings almost from the outset. in 1895, only six years
after Nietzsche’s mental collapse, Rudolph steiner portrayed him as a
fighter against his times, seeking to cultivate a conception of person-
hood that runs counter to the one fostered by dominant modern mass
culture.16 At the same time, some commentators in the world of late
Victorian letters saw in Nietzsche an exemplar of the contradictory and
sinister fin-de-siècle spirit of modernity itself.17 he was likewise associat-
ed with the politics of social Darwinism18 and by the second decade of
the twentieth century even accused in some quarters of being respon-
sible for starting the First World War.19 Yet Nietzsche has from the out-
set also been deemed a “pure thinker” in the sense of being a saint,
sage, seer, poet, or prophet.20 such a range of contradictory stand-
points is perhaps indicative of one thing above all: however one might
want to cast him, Nietzsche does not fit neatly into the mould of con-
temporary political discourse. As Keith Ansell-Pearson has noted,
“Nietzsche’s political thought … fails to conform to liberal and demo-
cratic sentiments which have prevailed over the last two hundred
16 see steiner, Friedrich Nietzsche.

17 see, for example, Nietzsche’s obituary in The Academy and Literature, 59 (1 september
1900), 175–6: Nietzsche’s “creed … has been called hideous, ferocious, abominable, in-
sane, but … he … is nevertheless a direct, we might almost say a legitimate, product of the
age.” For an insightful discussion of the age in question see Dowling, Language and
Decadence.
18 see, for example, Nietzsche’s obituary in The Athenaeum 3801 by t. Bailey saunders,
281–2, and Adams, “the ethics of tolstoy and Nietzsche.”
19 see “teutonismus” in The Athenaeum 4537, 347–8. the tone of this article is reflected
in contemporary comments by novelist Joseph conrad – see conrad, “the crime of
Partition,” Notes on Life and Letters, 139–40. see also, Anon., “the Philosophy of Power,”
168–72; and h. Milbourne’s 1917 article, “the hammer of thor,” 1–17.
20 havelock ellis, for example, held that Nietzsche must be counted as being “one of
the greatest spiritual forces … since Goethe” (this claim is cited in Anon., “Philosophy with
a hammer,” 31–2, 31). Another important critic of the time, holbrook Jackson, wrote of
Nietzsche that “a saintlier man never lived” (see his review of elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s
The Young Nietzsche, in the August 1912 edition of The Bookman, 215–6, 216); while poet
edward thomas held Nietzsche to be above all a writer of poetic significance (see edward
thomas’s 1909 review of various Nietzsche literature in The Bookman, 140).
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Introduction 9
years.”21 Does this suspicion of the central tenets of liberalism render

Nietzsche a philosophical nomad? is he a figure destined to occupy an
at best uncomfortably marginal role in our understanding of political
and social questions?
As we have seen, there are plenty of responses – pro and contra – to
the two questions just posed. My own takes its lead from Ansell-Pearson22
in endorsing the view that Nietzsche must be read politically.23 For me,
Nietzsche is a thinker of social import. Likewise, i see in Nietzsche’s
works a counter-perspective that resists the hegemony of liberal political
discourse, and a resource that invites us to think beyond the limits of
liberalism. this does not mean that one must passively endorse what
Daniel conway has deemed to be the dangerously “illiberal” conse-
quences of a Nietzschean approach.24 But, as conway notes, this ought
not to deter us from contemplating the “founding question of politics”
that Nietzsche’s thought poses. this is the question of human futurity –
of what kind of beings we might or even should become.25 Nietzsche, in
short, can be taken as a thinker who raises the question of the legitimacy
of our founding political concepts in a new way by placing them in the
context of a notion of selfhood that is fluid, formed, and constantly re-
forming. the approach developed in this book addresses the concep-
tions of politics, society, selfhood, and culture in Nietzsche in a way that
is also much indebted to the work of Richard schacht. schacht is fore-
most amongst scholars in showing how Nietzsche is, above all, a “natural-
istic” thinker. Naturalism, as schacht puts it, is not to be taken as
something that is “little more than a departure from both traditional
empiricism and rationalism, and a disposition to interpret all things
human in terms of the interactions of one distinctive but natural kind
with their environment and each other.”26 it involves, rather, a transla-
tion of humankind back into nature by rethinking what “natural” means
in terms that acknowledge both the roles biological embodiment (the
world of drives) and historically forged social relationships play in
21 Ansell-Pearson, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker, 2.

22 see Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche contra Rousseau. these texts reveal in exemplary manner
the socio-political registers of Nietzsche’s thought.
23 Another work worthy of mention here is Mellamphy’s The Three Stigmata of Friedrich
Nietzsche. Mellamphy argues that the political, anti-political, and supra-political aspects of
Nietzsche’s writings are all essential elements in his work. she then offers an account of a
Nietzschean politics of the body that receives its highest expression in Dionysian affirma-
tion. Much of the reading that is offered in this text harmonizes well with this approach.
24 conway, Nietzsche and the Political, 4.
25 ibid.
26 see schacht, Nietzsche, 54.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 9 2013-09-20 11:36:05

fashioning our humanity. Above all, Nietzsche seeks to naturalize our

understanding of values. he does not, however, seek to naturalize values
in a manner that reduces them to the mere play of drives or social forc-
es.27 We may spring from a concatenation of natural and historical-cul-
tural origins, but these origins do not explain entirely what we are or
might become. it is in this context, schacht argues, that Nietzsche devel-
ops an account of freedom that holds it to emanate from conditions of
power and discipline rather than being opposed to them, as traditional
conceptions contend.28 i, too, hold Nietzsche to be a thinker of natural-
ism in this non-reductive sense. We are amalgams of drives and embod-
ied beings, but we are not simply that. We are also creatures of habit,
convention, and custom – social beings fashioned by our unconsciously
adhered-to normative allegiances. We are self-interpreters, too (which is
not the same thing as saying we are defined by self-consciousness).
Naturalism in this sense is never mere worship of the methodologies of
the hard sciences, although it is informed by them.29 i do not, in other
words, seek to present a Nietzsche who is merely methodologically
naturalistic,30 any more than a Nietzsche who is simply political.31 i do
27 ibid., 399.
28 see ibid., 468, for a discussion of morality as discipline and a precondition of
self-overcoming.
29 eugen Fink argues that Nietzsche’s naturalism is often “hyperbole, and intentionally
coarse hyperbole at that. in no sense does Nietzsche put man back into nature or give him
over to the natural scientists” (“Nietzsche’s New experience of the World,” 206). the ac-
count offered here, of course, contends that a more subtle naturalism coexists with the
rhetoric of Nietzsche’s texts – one that is no less resistant to recuperation by “natural
scientists.”
30 thus, i do not agree with Robert Legros’s claim that “[t]hrough forging a naturalist
identity of nature – the idea of a preconventional nature – Nietzsche determines a natural
criterion for truth (the concept is adequate to nature), [and] a natural criterion for justice
(an attitude faithful to life’s nature)” that reflects a metaphysics of life (“the Nietzschean
Metaphysics of Life,” 133). Although, as i argue in chapter 6, a problematic conception of
this kind emerges in one of Nietzsche’s final works, The Antichrist, this conception is out of
character with much that precedes it. Nietzsche does not consistently proffer a simplistic
life-metaphysic with pretensions to solve our epistemic, moral, and politico-legal quandar-
ies by naturalistic means. Rather, his primary interest is in rendering problematic the very
“naturalness” of such conceptions – there is for him no “natural justice.” Justice talk is, for
Nietzsche, a consequence of social and historical forces (see the discussion in chapter 3).
indeed, it is hard to conceive how what Legros calls a “preconventional nature” could pro-
vide a criterion for anything as wholly conventional as a determinate resolution of what
truth or justice might amount to. Nietzsche’s conception of what justice amounts to is, i
argue, rooted in the inclination to suspend a condemnatory judgemental attitude and
celebrates in its place the virtue of mercy (see chapter 5).
31 Leslie thiele, in one of the most powerful and perceptive readings of Nietzsche prof-
fered in the last twenty five years, argues that for Nietzsche “[t]he greatest struggles are not
25660_Sedgwick.indb 10 2013-09-20 11:36:05

Introduction 11
not, in short, seek to offer a seamless reading of the development

of Nietzsche’s ideas.32 Following Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, i am of the
view that Nietzsche is a thinker of contradictions.33 the various mo-
ments of inconsistency that pattern Nietzsche’s writings are not to be
taken as weaknesses but as a leitmotif of the web of relations that, for
Nietzsche, constitutes the path of thinking. One must cut one’s own
way through this web in the spirit of experiment. in this regard, i am
also indebted to the example set by the writings of theodor Adorno
to be witnessed on the battlefield or in the socio-political arena, but in the rule of the self.
the greatest victory is a well-ordered soul” (Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul, 65).
the well-ordered soul is, for Nietzsche, a kind of political entity: politics, on such a concep-
tion, is internalized. My own reading does not so much contradict this view as supplement
and amend it. On my account, Nietzsche argues that the self is initially fashioned in virtue
of prehistoric conventional structures of normative adherence that characterize the com-
munal-social realm. One can, for Nietzsche, overcome this condition through an act of
resistance to the norm. Nietzsche does not therefore see sociality as something that is
achieved in the first instance at the cost of individual autonomy (see thiele, 38). Rather,
such things as individuality emerge from their apparent “opposites”: the realm of commun-
ity and society, a world constituted by the iron force of traditional observance (“law”), cre-
ates the very conditions that are capable of exceeding it.
32 As Karsten harries has commented, Nietzsche is often read in a manner that seeks
to “translate” him into idioms more amenable to the presuppositions of one philosoph-
ical approach or another. Whatever the virtues of such translations, harries notes, “we
should ask ourselves whether such appropriation is not also a defense against a style and
a thinking that puts the philosophy guarded by professional philosophers into question”
(“the Philosopher at sea,” 23). As the beginning of chapter 5 perhaps suggests, this book
stakes no claims to defending philosophy in such a professionalized sense. indeed, the
notion that there is such a thing as “pure philosophy” (an idea that supports at least some
of the more dubious professional manifestations of the discipline) is clearly questioned in
Nietzsche’s writings.
33 see Müller-Lauter, Friedrich Nietzsche. Müller-Lauter situates Nietzsche’s thought in
the context of the “history of modern nihilism” (Preface) and argues that his writings must
be approached with the question of their apparent contradictions and inconsistencies fore-
most in mind. the problem of contradiction is traced by way of engagements with the in-
terpretations of prominent readers of Nietzsche, such as hans Vaihinger, Georg simmel,
Georg Lukács, and Martin heidegger. such interpreters, Müller-Lauter argues, seek to lo-
cate a foundation of consistency hidden beneath the surging and contradictory surfaces of
Nietzsche’s texts and thereby do violence to the “specificity” of contradiction as it plays it-
self out in Nietzsche’s writings (5). Müller-Lauter, in contrast, seeks to do justice to the
trajectory of contradiction in Nietzsche arguing, for example, that Nietzsche’s conception
of power (specifically, will to power) is made manifest in contradiction: power itself
has contradiction (resistance) as one of its most refined and pervasive consequences.
contradiction likewise runs through Nietzsche’s early thought on history (in the second of
the Untimely Meditations) in terms of the tension articulated between “scientific-historical
thinking” and “the suprahistorical forces of art and religion.” in the terms outlined in the
current volume, this contradiction is articulated in terms of the tensions between destruc-
tive, critical thought, on the one hand, and rejuvenating, oracular myth on the other.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 11 2013-09-20 11:36:05

and Max horkheimer. their unflinching way with Nietzsche, an ap-

proach that is unafraid to appreciate his best and sometimes most
disturbing insights, serves as an ideal of engagement that is never easy
to emulate.34
Nietzsche, well characterized by terry eagleton as “an astonishingly rad-

ical thinker,”35 often comes across as an uncanny and uncomfortable
blend of modern and anti-modern, radical and reactionary. he foresees
the rise of secularism but responds to it in a manner that combines the
atheistic with the anti-democratic. he affirms pluralism, but despises
liberalism. he rejects the modern nation state as coercive but refuses
to offer an alternative, instead appearing to revel in the contingencies
of a philosophy of power that spurns notions of natural right and equal-
ity. he perceives clearly enough the cruel violence of life and yet we
catch him often seemingly affirming it. he despises pity but loves mercy.
Nietzsche is like our bad and bruised conscience. his is a painful voice
that speaks against us from within ourselves, at once radical and anti-
radical, enlightener and counter-enlightener. this uncanny nature
comes especially to the fore when one begins to think about his philoso-
phy in the context of questions concerning the nature of law and justice.
in this regard, Nietzsche’s thinking has received far less attention than
it is due. Of recent work in this area, Jens Petersen and Manuel Knoll
have offered thought-provoking engagements with Nietzsche’s treat-
ment of justice.36 For them, as for me, Nietzsche’s thought performs
more than a merely destructive incursion into hitherto sacred territory.
34 see Adorno and horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment. Adorno and horkheimer’s

perceptive reading of Nietzsche as an unmasker of the instrumentalism concealed within
enlightenment rationality exemplifies the kind of reading i have in mind.
35 eagleton, Trouble with Strangers, 171.
36 see Knoll, “Nietzsches Begriff der sozialen Gerechtigkeit.” For Knoll, Nietzsche is a
thinker who shows a strong commitment to developing a theory of social justice modelled
after views outlined by Plato in The Republic. see also Petersen, Nietzsches Genialität der
Gerechtigkeit. For Petersen, the theme of justice is present in Nietzsche’s thought as some-
thing pervasive yet often invisible with the consequence that it is multi-faceted in its com-
plexity. Nietzsche’s approach destabilizes conventional accounts of right: it conjoins
questions of legitimacy relating to knowledge to the nature of law, justice, and power.
taking the diverse nature of Nietzsche’s thought into account poses the biggest challenge
to any interpreter (Petersen criticizes D.W. Yang’s book, Die Problematik des Begriffs der
Gerechtigkeit in der Philosophie von Friedrich Nietzsche (Berlin, 2005) for not taking this com-
plex commitment to the question of justice sufficiently into account). Although he ac-
knowledges that Nietzsche is an anti-systematic thinker, Petersen adopts a quite rigorous
methodological approach to the exploration of the Nietzschean thematization of justice
that remains acutely sensitive to its ambiguities. My own reading shares much in common
25660_Sedgwick.indb 12 2013-09-20 11:36:05

Introduction 13
the thesis developed here is simple enough. i hold Nietzsche’s treat-

ment of justice to spring from an engagement with themes already chart-
ed in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. The Birth is a work of homage to
myth that invokes an absolute justice grasped by way of an artistic meta-
physics. the young Nietzsche’s encounter with Greek tragedy spurs the
development of an oracular conception of justice that speaks from be-
yond the domain of rigid social convention with a power that renders it
capable of highlighting and indicting the mediocre and exhausted con-
dition of modernity. in Human, All Too Human this metaphysics gives way
to naturalism, or what Nietzsche calls “historical philosophy.” this gives
rise to a radical and original approach to understanding humanity in
terms of its law-like nature. Nietzsche holds human identity to be a con-
sequence of the fusion of drives and communal social forces. this fusion
happens in such a way that the drives themselves are affected by it. the
human being, in short, is above all a creature of embodied culture. the
radical reinterpretation initiated by Nietzsche’s naturalistic turn initiates
a sustained critique of the legitimacy of the notion of punishment.
Although Human, All Too Human rejects Nietzsche’s earlier metaphysics,
the development of his thought is not marked by a simple rejection of
the terms of The Birth of Tragedy’s engagement with modernity. Nor does
Nietzsche discard the possibility of redeeming the oracular articulation
of justice found in The Birth. in fact, in the aftermath of a rejection of
traditional accounts of the nature of willing, moral responsibility, and
punishment, Nietzsche’s mature thought seeks to rejuvenate the concep-
tion of an oracular justice in naturalistic terms. this rejuvenation is
grounded in a new account of the nature of human freedom, and in a
vision of genuine philosophical thought as the creative legislation of
values, that embraces an ethic of mercy. the pursuit of this ethic tempts
Nietzsche on to the path toward a revaluation of values. Revaluation, too,
embraces an oracular element. in The Antichrist, however, the oracular
invocation of “life” as the source of authority with which to curse the
christian church (a curse that, it is worth noting, is not aimed at the
figure of christ himself but at the institutions that emerge in the wake of
with Petersen’s. thus, the original character of justice is grounded in an exchange princi-
ple that ultimately outstrips the realm of law and custom from which it emerges (52ff).
Likewise, Petersen appreciates the manner in which Nietzsche articulates this development
by way of a critique of the notion of freedom of the will and develops a conception of jus-
tice that sublimates its origins in punishment and guilt (105ff). such a conception turns on
the notion of will to power, which is productive of a mode of authority that can be disen-
tangled from the notion of revenge usually associated with conceptions of equivalence and
compensation. however, the interpretation offered here traces Nietzsche’s concern back
to The Birth of Tragedy rather than the second of the Untimely Meditations.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 13 2013-09-20 11:36:06

his untimely death37) reveals the limits of Nietzsche’s re-evaluative ambi-

tions, compromizing his naturalistic discourse. the integrity of this dis-
course, i argue, is best served by going beyond revaluation and, ironically
perhaps, returning to the ethic of mercy outlined in chapter 5. such in-
tegrity is only possible if one pursues a self-criticism of the kind of natu-
ralistic methodological enterprise associated with the enlightenment.
With this thought one is taken into the problem of enlightenment as it
is articulated by Adorno and horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment.
As can be inferred from the above summary, the present text deploys
a largely sequential approach to the discussion of Nietzsche’s thought.38
it begins with the earliest of his published writings, The Birth of Tragedy,
and the second of the Untimely Meditations in order to develop an ac-
count of his early metaphysical views (1872; 1874). chapter 2 then looks
at the so-called “middle period” writings (Human, All Too Human [1878],
Assorted Opinions and Maxims [1879], The Wanderer and His Shadow
[1880], Daybreak [1881], and The Gay Science [1882]) as a means of
elucidating Nietzsche’s development of historical naturalism and his
account of our law-like nature. chapter 3 explores these texts further in
the context of the account offered in them of justice, community, and
power, turning to Beyond Good and Evil (1885) toward the end. chapter
4 seeks to offer an analysis of Nietzsche’s views on punishment, and rang-
es freely from the “middle period” books to the discussions offered in
Beyond Good and Evil, book 5 of The Gay Science (added to the original text
in 1887), and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887). in chapter 5, i take a
slight step back, so to speak, and focus at some length on Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (1883–85), a work that chronologically precedes those dis-
cussed at the end of the previous chapter. chapter 5 thus offers an ac-
count of justice and naturalism grounded in the text of Zarathustra,
37 theologian Jürgen Moltmann concurs with Nietzsche’s drawing a distinction be-

tween the institution of the christian church and the teaching of Jesus. Moltmann offers
an account of christ’s teaching that effectively positions it within a Nietzschean-style frame-
work of life-affirmation. he comments, “so Nietzsche was right: ‘eternal life is eternal liv-
ingness’ … Jesus didn’t bring a new religion into the world. he brought new life. he didn’t
found ‘christianity,’ nor did he set up an ecclesial rule over the nations. he brought life
into this violent and dying world … christ is the divine Yes to life” (“Dialogue or Mission?,”
in God for a Secular Society, 241).
38 For this volume i have elected to concentrate entirely on Nietzsche’s published
writings rather than his notebooks. i do not dispute that much of value is to be found in
the notebooks and have no objection to readings that use them extensively, as some of my
other readings of Nietzsche readily demonstrate. however, as the length of this book sug-
gests, there is more than enough material of sufficient quantity and complexity to war-
rant exclusively treating Nietzsche’s engagement with the problem of justice in his
published works.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 14 2013-09-20 11:36:06

Introduction 15
relating this in turn to later material from Beyond Good and Evil, the
Genealogy, book 5 of The Gay Science, and Twilight of the Idols (1888). the
reason for this chronological diversion is simple enough. Zarathustra is
the work that, according to Nietzsche himself, is his greatest achieve-
ment and must be located at the heart of his mature thought.39 the
book is, as Lawrence Lampert notes, “the explosive core of the work of
the philosopher who could say ‘i am dynamite.’”40 the so-called “mid-
dle period” of Nietzsche’s thought ends with the figure of zarathustra:
the first edition of The Gay Science concludes with book 4 and the “going
under” with which Thus Spoke Zarathustra begins (The Gay Science,
34241). the later writings, too, self-consciously orient themselves
around Zarathustra. the poem “From high Mountains,” which con-
cludes Nietzsche’s articulation of a re-vitalized conception of philosophy
in Beyond Good and Evil, returns the reader to the thought of zarathustra,
who is “the guests of guests.” in the Genealogy Nietzsche reminds us that
we must approach his writings in a manner that involves going back and
forth between earlier and later texts. According to the Preface, the sense
of what is argued in the Genealogy is only truly evident if one has made the
effort to explore his earlier writings and bear them in mind (8). As if to
hammer the point home, the conclusion of the Genealogy’s second essay
alludes to zarathustra as offering the creative paradigm for developing
the ideas suggested there (24–5), while the third essay is described by
Nietzsche as a “commentary” on the aphorism that is placed at the begin-
ning of it – and this aphorism is prefaced with a quotation from
Zarathustra. the chronological diversion involved in this discussion is
thus, i hope, well justified. chapter 6 offers a discussion of Nietzsche’s
very late writings by way of an initial consideration of the 1886 prefaces
Nietzsche adds to Human, All Too Human and Daybreak in order to frame
a critical discussion of the attempt at a revaluation of values made in The
Antichrist (1888), while a conclusion returns us to some of the issues
concerning the politics of Nietzsche’s thought raised in the present
introduction.
39 see, for example, Ecce Homo, “Why i Write such Good Books,” 1.
40 Lampert, Nietzsche’s Teaching, 5.
41 All citations for Nietzsche’s texts refer to sections, rather than page numbers.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 15 2013-09-20 11:36:06

1
The Divine Justice of Tragedy:

Myth, Metaphysics, and Modernity
1. A concern with the nature of law and justice is evident even in Nietzsche’s earli-
est major work, the Birth of tragedy. This concern is reflected in the text’s
deployment of its central concepts, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The god
Apollo is law-like and manifests the order and harmony characteristic of the indi-
viduated social realm. Apollonian rules keep lawless nature at bay, concealing it
beneath an aesthetic of harmonious proportion. In contrast, Dionysus, the god of
intoxication and excess, is associated with lawless nature. Through Dionysian
impulses individuated Apollonian order is torn asunder; the normative realm and
the rationality associated with it dissolve as ecstatic humankind reasserts its kin-
ship with nature. In Ancient Greek tragedy the horrifying violence of existence is
rendered amenable to contemplation through a fusion in which Apollonian ele-
ments frame Dionysian terror and suffering, placing it within a divine narrative
capable of endowing life with redemptive sense. The Greeks, Nietzsche argues, thus
created their gods “from a most profound need.” The result is a sufficient and ac-
ceptable theodicy. The art of tragedy, as this theodicy’s highest form of expression,
redeems life.
Nietzsche engages with questions about the nature of law and justice
even in his first book. in order to approach his engagement, however, it
is necessary to recall its main arguments about Greek tragic culture and
the concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian. the predominant inter-
pretation of Greek culture was that espoused by figures such as J.J.
Winckelmann (1717–1768) and later, Mathew Arnold (1822–1888).1
this view held the great Greek cultural achievements in the arts and
philosophy to be the expression of a calm and enlightened simplicity,
1 Arnold, in 1865, famously described the ancient Greek world as one of “sweetness
and light.” see Culture and Anarchy.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 16 2013-09-20 11:36:06

The Divine Justice of Tragedy 17
one epitomized by the elegant harmony of design apparent in its sculp-

ture and architecture, but also present in its literature and drama.
Against this view, The Birth of Tragedy seeks to account for Greek formal
simplicity and beauty in terms that are subterranean and sinister. the
formal harmony of ancient Greek artistic works, Nietzsche argues, is in
fact the sublimated expression of a violence that permeated the ancient
Greek cultural experience. in order to explain the nature of such vio-
lence, Nietzsche introduces two aesthetic categories: the Apollonian and
the Dionysian.
Apollo is the Ancient Greek sun god. he is “the shining one,” the god
of light and “of all plastic energies” (The Birth of Tragedy, 1). Nietzsche
argues that the Apollonian aesthetic principle first makes its appearance
in homeric myth and reaches its highest level of expression in Ancient
Greek sculpture, with its emphasis on the proportion and harmony of
the human form. scholars like Winckelmann take this Apollonian ap-
pearance at face value, interpreting it as encapsulating the reality of the
ancient Greek world. As its close association with sculpture suggests, the
Apollonian principle is “the principle of individuation”: it is the princi-
ple that expresses the individual’s sense of separateness from others.
individual self-understanding is Apollonian since it rests on this feeling
of an unbridgeable isolation and alienation both from others (social dif-
ferences) and from the realm of nature. consciousness is threatened by
nature because the latter is unruly and no respecter of persons and their
socially endowed status. Nature, which is the epitome of the organic,
does not value the individual. Rather, nature liquidates the individual,
who, in the face of its infinite, lawless force, is helpless and as nothing. As
befits something closely associated with the social realm, the Apollonian
answer to the chaos of lawless nature is to assert the primacy of rules
and laws. these rules thus allow the ancient Greek to throw a veil of il-
lusion over the world as a means of coping with its uncomfortable, inhu-
man reality. Apollonian sensibilities disguise the threat of individual
extinction by creating a conceptual net of beauty and proportion. the
Apollonian is an aesthetic that constrains, directing and structuring artis-
tic expression in such a way as to render possible an art of the most indi-
viduated and formal kind imaginable, one that, with its assertion of
harmony, conceals the threat of individual mortality. An art that is
Apollonian is an art characterized by order and the hegemony of the
conscious self. such an art expresses, albeit in a concealed way, the con-
stitutive power social order exerts over all individual thought and experi-
ence. it is from this socially generated propensity to create a sense of
order and proportion that the iron association between the Apollonian
and the “principle of individuation” springs.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 17 2013-09-20 11:36:06

in contrast to the dream world of Apollonian representation, the

Dionysian aesthetic principle is essentially “nonimagistic.” the condi-
tion most closely linked with it is one of “intoxication” (The Birth of
Tragedy, 1). Dionysus is the festive god of the Ancient Greeks. Nietzsche
tells us that Dionysian festivals were events of “extravagant sexual licen-
tiousness” in which “the most savage natural instincts were unleashed”
(The Birth of Tragedy, 2). the figure of Dionysus emerges in the festival as
an expression of the ecstasy engendered by abandoning the socially in-
dividuated and law-like self in a condition that recalls pre-individuated
existence. in Dionysian rapture, “nature which has become alienated,
hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her
lost son, man.” through this Dionysian reconciliation “everything sub-
jective” vanishes “into complete self-forgetfulness.” With this suspension
of the principle of individuation, the social barriers separating person
from person also evaporate. Dionysian art reflects this, identifying itself
with a “primal unity” that signifies the “oneness of man with nature”
(The Birth of Tragedy, 3). the Dionysian’s closest artistic association, it
follows, cannot be with conceptually oriented, representational, and in-
dividuating sculpture, but rather with the flowing, liquid art of music. if
Apollonian art enshrines the representational stability of formal rules of
limitation, the Dionysian expresses the immanence of an unrestrained
becoming that overflows these boundaries. in this overflowing, the
Dionysian sunders imagistic modes of representation and dissolves the
very condition of possibility upon which individual self-consciousness
rests, returning us to an awareness of the primacy of the de-individuated
animality of nature and the body.
Because of its proximity with the Dionysian, the harmonious
Apollonian consciousness of the ancient Greek finds itself uncannily
mirrored in the disturbed and chaotic Dionysian state. in consequence,
the Apollonian Greek’s response to the spectacle of the collective release
of Dionysian festivity would, Nietzsche argues, have been one of uncom-
fortable self-recognition: “With what astonishment must the Apollinian
Greek have beheld him [the Dionysian reveller]! With an astonishment
that was all the greater the more it was mingled with the shuddering
suspicion that all this was actually not so very alien to him after all, in fact,
that it was only his Apollinian consciousness which, like a veil, hid this
Dionysian world from his vision” (The Birth of Tragedy, 2). Winckelmann,
in short, is wrong in thinking of the ancient Greek world as one gov-
erned solely by enlightened rational restraint. it is, rather, a realm of re-
pressed violence and inner conflict.
The Birth of Tragedy’s central claim is that Attic tragedy restores the
repressed, Dionysian aspect of the Apollonian Greek’s identity, for it is
25660_Sedgwick.indb 18 2013-09-20 11:36:06

“an equally Dionysian and Apollinian form of art” (The Birth of Tragedy,
1). the Apollonian artist imitates the representational realm of dream
concepts, while the Dionysian artist imitates the condition of festive rap-
ture. the tragic artist, however, uses Apollonian symbols to convey the
Dionysian truth of nature; in this way the redemptive capabilities of the
Apollonian are revealed, for it is the “symbolical analogue of the sooth-
saying faculty and of the arts generally” and it is these arts “which make
life possible and worth living” (The Birth of Tragedy, 1). in tragedy, there-
fore, the Apollonian provides the Dionysian with a language that allows
for the latter’s retrieval and representation in symbolic, and hence less
terrifying, terms. in its earliest manifestations in the works of Aeschylus
(525–456 bce), tragic drama consists of a chorus that interprets the nar-
rative as it unfolds, and a handful of figures whose function is to per-
sonify the narrative’s central themes. sophocles develops this model,
introducing more characters but preserving the central role of the cho-
rus. According to Nietzsche, it is with the chorus that the Dionysian ele-
ment in tragedy resides. the chorus is “the symbol of the whole excited
Dionysian throng” of non-individuated communal beings that ground
social order2 (The Birth of Tragedy, 2). the Dionysian condition engen-
dered by the chorus dissolves the spectator’s sense of their own individu-
ality, so that he or she succumbs to the state of self-forgetting necessary
to become an active participator within the tragedy and hence fit for the
revelation of Dionysian truth.3
the Apollonian component of Greek tragedy is the dialogue spoken
by the drama’s characters (The Birth of Tragedy, 9). Nietzsche notes that
sophocles’s language is remarkable precisely for its “Apollinian preci-
sion and lucidity.” this language, however, is a mask: it has the appearance
of transparency, simplicity, and beauty, but this appearance conceals
its genuine significance. the hero’s words, for example those of King
Oedipus, give the impression that one is gazing straight into the “inner-
most ground” of his essence. however, if one ignores the conception of
the hero that the dialogue generates and looks instead “into the myth
that projects itself in these lucid reflections” the initial impression of
lucidity is subverted. As the tragic hero’s Apollonian language echoes
and dies away something occurs that is akin to what happens when one
2 One can think of this in the following way: if the individuated characters in the play
are Apollonian, the Dionysian throng that bears witness to their fate is the collective social
understanding of the public realm, the impersonal and shared wisdom of the community.
thus, in sophocles’s King Oedipus the chorus can be taken to stand for the collective voice
of the city of thebes.
3 thus, the spectator of King Oedipus becomes a citizen of thebes.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 19 2013-09-20 11:36:06

turns one’s gaze away from the bright sun after taking a brief glimpse at
it. Just as glancing at the sun gives rise to spots in one’s vision, so the
encounter with the brightness of sophoclean heroic dialogue allows one
a brief glance into the “terrors of nature” as one is engulfed in the dark-
ening effect created by its receding afterglow. it is this after-effect that
initiates a reassertion of the mythic power of lawless nature. the tragic
hero’s language, in other words, functions as a provocation that spurs
us to acknowledge the Dionysian terror of existence, yet it allows us to
contemplate this terror without ultimately succumbing to it. thus, as we
are driven to the acknowledgement of terror, the Dionysian excitement
engendered by the chorus is likewise “transferred … to that masked
figure,” the play’s tragic hero, who becomes transformed into an instan-
tiated symbol of Dionysus. the audience, now immersed in the play as
witnesses, encounter a “Dionysus [who] no longer speaks through forc-
es but as an epic hero” (The Birth of Tragedy, 8). the Dionysian power of
brute nature is thus given voice as the tragic hero speaks symbolically
through the language of Apollonian form. As he speaks, the “bright im-
age projections of the sophoclean hero” reveal the opposite of a repre-
sentational, “optical phenomenon” dependent upon images (The Birth
of Tragedy, 9). Apollonian language and concepts, which generally con-
ceal the Dionysian terror of existence are, in tragedy, employed against
their ownmost tendency in order to reveal it (The Birth of Tragedy, 10).
tragedy holds the Dionysian and the Apollonian elements together
inexorably, since neither can be allowed to gain ultimate purchase over
the other if the revelation of Dionysian truth is to be possible. these two
aspects are revealed to stand in need of one another to such an extent
that neither could be said to be primary. the communication of the
nonimagistic reality of the world of nature must take place within the
images of language, just as that language must conceal itself at the very
moment in which it succeeds in presenting the Dionysian reality from
which society and culture originally emerged. in this way Apollonian ra-
tional discourse gives voice to the primacy of myth, for it is by way of
Apollonian dialogue that the mythical narratives that tragedy dramatizes
(i.e. the Prometheus and Oedipus legends) are reaffirmed in their living
ability to communicate ultimate truth.
According to Nietzsche, a hidden meaning lurks behind the Greek
deities and mythic heroes celebrated by tragedy. this meaning can be
made plain enough if one realizes the great need from which such cultural
creations spring. if one considers the gods of Olympus, one hears “noth-
ing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant life in which all things,
whether good or evil, are deified” (The Birth of Tragedy, 3). the Greek
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gods, Nietzsche tells us, stand beyond morality and it is their taking such a
stance that justifies life. Life is unavoidable suffering, for potential pain
accompanies every moment, and even pleasure offers no more than a
temporary and illusory respite from the threat of pain. Life is a thing of
terror, for life defies all attempts by the living to master it. One’s destiny
is ultimately out of one’s hands. the Olympians, in their heroic and fan-
tastic aspects, mask this violent reality of ancient Greek life, humanizing
the inhuman and so making it a fit object of contemplation. the gods
keep the terrors and suffering of existence at bay, enclosing them within
the bounds of a divine narrative that endows redemptive sense: “it was
[hence] in order to be able to live that the Greeks had to create these
gods from a most profound need” (The Birth of Tragedy, 3). that the an-
cient Greek gods, Nietzsche tells us, justify the suffering of human life
because “they themselves live it” alone makes for a sufficient and accept-
able theodicy. in tragedy, this theodicy reaches its ultimate expression as
art, “for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world
are eternally justified” (The Birth of Tragedy, 5). With the above brief sketch
in mind, it is now possible to turn to a consideration of Nietzsche’s treat-
ment of law and justice in The Birth of Tragedy. One can divide this treat-
ment into three parts. the first and second concern the tragedies of
sophocles and Aeschylus; the third concerns the emergence of socratism
and the death of tragedy.
2. Nietzsche’s discussion of tragedy concentrates on Oedipus, King of Thebes. The

Dionysian spaces between Oedipus’s Apollonian speeches open up an abyssal
irony. Oedipus, icon of legal authority, is an unknowing agent of injustice. The
unsolved murder of Oedipus’s predecessor, King Laius, has brought pestilence
upon Thebes. Oedipus responds by instigating an investigative process that ulti-
mately reveals he himself is Laius’s murderer. Worse still, Laius turns out to be
Oedipus’s father; Oedipus’s wife and queen is his mother; his children are also his
siblings. The play reveals Oedipus’s hidden identity: the Apollonian monarch and
figure of order is at the same time a being of Dionysian chaos and perversion. In
this fusion of contradictory elements Oedipus epitomizes the tragic hero, predes-
tined to err and to suffer. His Apollonian poetic language dwells in the realm of
law but serves to communicate a yawning Dionysian chasm of religiously inspired
horror provoked by the terror of lawless and perverse nature. Oedipus remains he-
roic and his suffering is thereby revealed as the necessary prelude to Dionysian
wisdom concerning the human condition. Tragedy is thus the vehicle of a wisdom
that transcends the sphere of moral law by fusing religious and poetic elements.
Through it the Oedipal legal knot is unravelled to reveal the hubris of a humanity
that seeks mastery over nature.
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sophocles’s plays King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone (written

between 442–401 bce) dramatize various themes from the ancient leg-
end of the fall of the royal house of thebes.4 Nietzsche’s discussion of
sophocles in The Birth of Tragedy centres on Oedipus.5 in these works,
Nietzsche argues, Oedipus’s Apollonian speech sits within a plot that
engulfs him in dreadful irony, as it is revealed that through his actions
he has unknowingly piled injustice upon injustice. King Oedipus begins
in the midst of traumatic events: the gods have visited punishment on
thebes because the wrong caused by the death of Oedipus’s father,
4 the first of these to be written was Antigone. the three plays, although related, do
not actually form a trilogy, although Oedipus at Colonus clearly takes up where King Oedipus
has left off. For a brief and illuminating discussion of these see e.F. Watling’s introduc-
tion to his complete translation of these works in the Penguin edition of sophocles, The
Theban Plays.
5 the story of King Oedipus is well known, but it may be just as well to recall its essentials
here. Oedipus is the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta of thebes. the parents are al-
lowed no joy in their son, however, for the oracle of Apollo predicts that he will one day kill
his father and marry his own mother. the king and queen decide to have the child killed
in at attempt to thwart this prophecy. they order a shepherd to take Oedipus and leave
him to die on a mountainside, his feet held together by a pin that has been driven into his
flesh in order to prevent him from having even the smallest chance of survival. the shep-
herd, however, cannot bring himself to infanticide, so he instead entrusts the child to an-
other. the person who takes Oedipus happens to be the servant of Polybus, King of
corinth. Polybus in turn adopts him as his only child and heir and gives Oedipus his name
(which means “swollen Foot” – testimony of the scarring caused by the pin inserted
through the child’s feet). As a young man, Oedipus comes to hear of the prophecy con-
cerning him from a messenger of Apollo. Believing Polybus to be his real father he flees
corinth in an attempt to avoid the prophecy being realized, and ends up approaching
thebes. On the road to thebes Oedipus encounters a man and is plunged into an argu-
ment that culminates in the man’s death. thebes is terrorized by the sphinx, a creature of
dreadful power that torments by posing a riddle that none are able to answer. Oedipus
solves the riddle and overcomes the sphinx. triumphant, he enters thebes to find a city
lacking a monarch due to its king having been killed on a road by an unknown stranger.
thebes, grateful to Oedipus for vanquishing the sphinx, makes him its new king. he takes
the incumbent queen as his wife. After well over a decade of prosperity under the wise rule
of Oedipus, who now has children, pestilence and blight befall the city. Oedipus pledges to
uncover the offence to the gods that has brought about such misery. Oedipus’s uncle,
creon, discovers from the oracle of Apollo that the cause of the pestilence is the murder
of King Laius, whose killer has never been brought to justice. As the play unfolds, evidence
(including the scars on his feet) inexorably reveals Oedipus himself to be, as the prophet
tiresias tells him, “the cursed polluter of this land” (The Theban Plays, 35), the murderer of
his own father, Laius. to compound the misery, it follows that the woman he married is his
mother and his children are his siblings. Jocasta kills herself in despair; Oedipus blinds
himself. Now robbed of all authority, Oedipus awaits the sentence of exile that he himself
proposed for Laius’s murderer. Banishment, however, does not happen to Oedipus until
he is an old man. even this does not end his suffering, which only death can overcome.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 22 2013-09-20 11:36:06

Laius, has yet to be compensated for. the killer has not been identified.
Motivated by a combination of a sense of justice and self-interest,6
Oedipus initiates an investigation in which he himself is the prosecutor
and judge. he declares that if the murderer of Laius should reveal him-
self willingly then the only punishment that shall be meted out will be
banishment.7 stage by stage, the investigative process reveals that the
proud king and saviour of thebes, a noble and decent man, is also a
patricidal murderer. Worse, Oedipus did more than simply kill Laius;
he has also committed incest by marrying his own mother. Oedipus, in
other words, is criminal perversion of nature personified. his hidden
Dionysian identity returns to destroy him, emerging out of the complex
train of events he unwittingly sets in motion as murderer, committer of
incest, and monarchical defender of justice. Oedipus must now stand to
face the punishment he himself has decreed (which he does willingly).
Banishment, however, is slow in coming – as Oedipus at Colonus reveals –
and it is only as an old man, his children now grown, that Oedipus enters
exile in the lands of King theseus. even then, the old King is not left in
peace, but is tormented by the machinations of his sons, who offer no
support but instead plan to use both him and the mysterious power
of his mortal remains to further their own ends. As a result, Oedipus
conceals himself, dying finally in a secret location accompanied only by
the trusted King theseus. in spite of his dreadful suffering, the dying
Oedipus overcomes all bitterness concerning his fate. he is “taken with-
out a pang, without grief or agony – a passing more wonderful than that
of any other man.”8
sophocles, Nietzsche notes, regards his tragic hero as a noble and wise
being predestined for error and anguish. it is what sophocles achieves in
his portrayal of this suffering that matters, for by way of it the spectator
of the tragedy gains an insight and wisdom that transcends the sphere
of moral law that Oedipus has so plainly transgressed. Oedipus’s life
engenders
a magical power of blessing that remains effective even beyond his

decease. the noble human being does not sin, the profound poet
wants to tell us: though every law [Gesetz], every natural order, even
the moral world may perish through his actions, his actions also
produce a higher magical circle of effects which found a new world
6 the killer, Oedipus decides, might decide to add another king to his list in the shape
of Oedipus himself (ibid., 29).
7 ibid., 31.
8 ibid., 121.
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on the ruins of the old one that has been overthrown. this is what
the thinker [sophocles] wants to say to us insofar as he is at the
same time a religious thinker. As a poet he first shows us a marvel-
lously tied knot of a trial [Prozessknoten], slowly unravelled by the
judge [Richter], bit by bit, for his own undoing. the genuinely
hellenic delight at this dialectical solution is so great that it intro-
duces a trait of superior cheerfulness into the whole work, every-
where softening the sharp points of the gruesome presuppositions
of this process [Prozess]. (The Birth of Tragedy, 9)
the Dionysian and Apollonian elements of the tragedy are, in other

words, reflected in the dramatist’s religious and poetic aspects. As a reli-
gious thinker, sophocles affirms the supremacy of the heroic and stoical
Oedipus over moral and natural law. As a poet, sophocles invokes the
social realm of legality, making use of the ironic effect achieved by con-
structing a dramatic scenario in which a trial concludes with the indict-
ment of the trial’s initiator and judge. the “cheerfulness” Nietzsche
notes here is not the kind of thoughtless happiness that springs from
mere comfort and freedom from danger. Rather, it is a forced and ironic
cheerfulness that arises from having the suffering, violence, and injus-
tice inherent in the world acted out in front of one’s eyes in a combina-
tion of religious (Dionysian) and poetic (Apollonian) forms. Judge and
accused turn out to be the same person, and opposites collide and dis-
perse as the glittering lucidity of poetic Apollonian language is used to
portray events that leave a yawning Dionysian chasm of religiously in-
spired horror in their wake.
Oedipus’s heroic status cannot be compromised by the lawlessness of
his deeds. As the religious insight confirms, his suffering is the prelude
to the revelation of a deeper Dionysian wisdom concerning the reality of
the human condition. Nietzsche argues that the second of sophocles’s
plays, Oedipus at Colonus, repeats this logic, but with the ironic cheerful-
ness at the dialectical unfolding of events now raised up into an “infinite
transfiguration.” the now ancient Oedipus, doomed as ever to suffer, “is
confronted by the supraterrestrial cheerfulness that descends from the
divine sphere and suggests to us that the hero attains his highest activity,
extending far beyond his life, through his purely passive posture, while
his conscious deeds and desires, earlier in his life, merely led him into
passivity. thus the intricate legal knot [Prozessknoten] of the Oedipus fa-
ble that no mortal eye could unravel is gradually disentangled – and the
most profound joy overcomes us at this divine counterpart of the dialec-
tic” (The Birth of Tragedy, 9). the unravelling of the irreconcilably en-
twined legal tangle of the Oedipus myth reveals forces superior to us,
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mocking the hubris of human aspiration. As law undoes itself, reality is

made manifest. Myth, in the shape of the primordial Dionysian religious
insight, indicates the limitations of human aspiration. the more we
strive to master our environment, the more we seek to assert our will, the
more we run the risk of paying, as Oedipus does, a dreadful price for our
attempt. the Apollonian dialogue of Oedipus at Colonus now allows for
the ironic Dionysian laughter of the gods who look down upon Oedipus’s
fate to echo through to the conclusion of his life and beyond as their
insight transfers itself to us.
We now appreciate the deep irony of Oedipus’s fall from grace on a
larger scale. Action, it turns out, is paradoxically a kind of inactivity, since
struggle, adherence to the law, and the pursuit of earthly justice ulti-
mately achieves nothing. the passivity that announces one’s acceptance
of fate, it also turns out, pertains to a resonant power that far surpasses
all active striving as Oedipus slides peacefully into hades. this Dionysian
wisdom tells us that we must each of us regard our own life of struggle
and suffering with Olympian detachment and irony. such wisdom re-
veals the artist’s mastery of Apollonian and Dionysian elements to be the
spontaneous expression of “healing nature” as our ironic sensibilities
protect us. the “abyss” may have been revealed, but in such a way that
one can walk away from the spectacle relatively undamaged.
3. Sophoclean tragedy demonstrates the limitation and necessity of the conventions

that shape social life. Law and authority are necessary conditions of society, but
they are also contingent and powerless in the face of elemental Dionysian nature.
The world of reason, law, and ethics is eternally threatened by lawless and mon-
strous forces. Yet these forces are nevertheless constitutive conditions of cultural
life. The Oedipus myth exemplifies this insight: in spite of his social eminence,
Dionysian mythic forces compel him to his perverse fate. Tragedy reveals a more
profound authority than that of earthly law as, cast down, Oedipus begins to give
voice to an unnatural Dionysian wisdom of passivity attained through great suf-
fering. Superficially, one can contrast Sophocles’s passive ideal of wisdom with
Aeschylus’s. The latter’s Prometheus explores heroic striving and the dignity of
liberation from the power of the gods. Liberation is sacrilegious: Aeschylus, like
Goethe after him, envisions a humanity creating culture out of its own impious
efforts. Impiety encapsulates the “Aeschylean demand” that the gods, too, be sub-
ject to an all-encompassing “justice” in the form of fate, which can be evaded by
neither god nor human. In Aeschylus’s work gods and poet are revealed as existing
in a state of mutual reliance and equality. Thus, Promethean myth and Oedipal
drama are closely connected in that they both overturn the conventions of law
and right through the affirmation of sacrilegious striving. In this way, tragedy
challenges the Apollonian tendency to impose legislation concerning the relations
25660_Sedgwick.indb 25 2013-09-20 11:36:06

between humanity and gods. Considered in their own terms, the worlds of hu-
man and immortal both have right on their side. However, both suffer from being
separated. Tragedy reveals the heroic consequences of attempting a reunification
of the human and the divine: any such attempt entails misery as a consequence
of its striving to break the iron grip of two conflicting and incompatible domains
of right.
By untangling the “legal knot” of the Oedipus story, sophocles demon-

strates both the limitations and the necessity of the formally mediated
norms and procedures that shape the world of daily social life. One can-
not live without law and authority, but law and authority are contingent
to the extent that they cannot ultimately protect the individual from the
Dionysian reality that threatens to engulf it. Another way of thinking of
this matter would be to say that one is unable solely by way of formal
representational concepts, which Nietzsche will ally later in The Birth of
Tragedy with socratism and science, to articulate the conditions upon
which civilization rests. Rather, as we will see, The Birth of Tragedy argues
that neither law nor even the kind of authority associated with the mod-
ern political state can exist without the sanction vouchsafed by the power
of myth. in illustrating this, the tragic genre reveals the delicate and
temporary nature of human will, reason, law, justice, and morality, for
through it these things stand revealed as eternally open to the threat of
destruction at the hands of something that is inhuman, lawless, and
monstrous but nevertheless a necessary part of life. Oedipus is an illus-
tration of this because whatever he might choose, however he might seek
to resist, whatever social eminence he attains, Dionysian mythic elements
compel him to be the abomination he is and thereby drag him down.
Oedipus cannot avoid the unnatural destiny nature ploughs for the path
of his life.
Oedipus, then, is unwillingly and unknowingly anti-natural – and the
tragic drama tells of the bringing to light of this knowledge. tragedy, as
we have already noted, refracts this insight about Oedipus’s Dionysian
reality by way of its Apollonian language. Oedipus, Nietzsche reminds
us, challenges nature. By solving the riddle of the sphinx, Oedipus forc-
es nature to yield its secrets. Oedipus can do so because he himself em-
bodies something resistant to nature that yet erupts out of it, albeit in
distorted form. this is because to resist nature one must always already
be a breaker of norms, one must contain within oneself something law-
less and inhuman that stands also in an alienated and tangential rela-
tion to the social realm. this, too, points up the irony of Oedipus’s life:
as king he must be the upholder of law, the institutional keeper of sa-
cred order; as a Dionysian dramatic figure (signified by his patricide
25660_Sedgwick.indb 26 2013-09-20 11:36:06

and incest) Oedipus is a law-breaker unfit for command. “command no

more. Obey. Your rule is ended,” Oedipus’s successor creon tells him.9
A person such as this can no longer command, since he now stands out-
side the world of norms; he has flouted the law. Oedipus’s authority is
thus not of a kind fit to be endorsed by the norms of social order and
legality. his authority is something of a quite different and disturbing
kind: that of an alien voice speaking from the other side of those
boundaries we cross only at our peril. this alien state of existence, says
Nietzsche, illuminates the meaning of Oedipus’s unnatural excess: “it is
this insight that i find expressed in that horrible triad of Oedipus’ desti-
nies: the same man who solves the riddle of nature – that sphinx of two
species – also must break the most sacred natural orders by murdering
his father and marrying his mother. indeed, the myth seems to whisper
to us that wisdom, and particularly Dionysian wisdom, is an unnatural
abomination: that he who by means of his knowledge plunges nature
into the abyss of destruction must also suffer the dissolution of nature in
his own person” (The Birth of Tragedy, 9). Knowledge of the Dionysian, in
other words, comes at great personal cost.
the dramatic retelling of the Oedipus myth tells us that the kind of
wisdom needed to solve the riddle of nature must be such that it draws
upon what has become unnatural, dreadful, and perverted. As we stand
before nature, we, like Oedipus, do so with the intent of mastering it by
way of what we believe to be our autonomous Apollonian reason. We
seek to solve nature’s hidden riddles with acts of will, employing our ra-
tional abilities as if they were independent of the world from which they
sprang. When we do so, however, we run the risk of losing our culturally
individuated identity. For what we really resort to in our contest with
nature is something endowed to us by nature itself – something repressed
that must return to us in order to empower us in our struggle, but which
can only return as something distorted and unnatural. We are pieces of
nature and, for this reason, insofar as we succeed in struggling with na-
ture we must also be able to turn against what is natural in ourselves. the
riddle-solver that defeats the sphinx must also be part sphinx. the price
Oedipus has paid in advance for his victory over the sphinx is that he is
himself sphinx-like, a kind of distorted monstrosity of mixed species, a
freak of nature, something intimately connected with and yet inimical to
what is natural. the heroic Oedipus embodies this paradox of nature
and anti-nature and acts it out in his destiny. Oedipus is the overturning
of the order of things incarnate: as husband to his mother he even
9 ibid., 68.
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subverts the iron grip of temporality, standing symbolically in relation to

himself as his own father. this subversion perhaps explains the wise
Oedipus’s passivity: if even time is out of joint, what can be done that will
not have impossible consequences?
For Nietzsche, one can draw an insightful contrast between Oedipus’s
passivity and the attitude of the tragic-heroic Prometheus presented by
sophocles’s predecessor, Aeschylus, the so-called “father of tragedy.” the
Promethean myth is a narrative of heroic striving, of humanity pitted
against the gods, the key element of which is the harnessing of fire, the
symbol of the cultural development that transports humankind from
barbarism to a rudimentary world of culture.10 culture means no longer
being entirely in thrall to the gods: “that man should freely dispose of
fire without receiving it as a present from heaven … struck these primi-
tive and reflective men as sacrilege, as a robbery of divine nature.” such
sacrilege poses “the very first philosophical problem” that drives an in-
soluble barrier between all cultured humanity and the divine, for by way
of it human dignity is attained at the cost of a sacrilegious, rebellious
break with the natural order of things; culture and divine nature are
rendered heterogeneous realms that cannot be joined together in har-
monious unity.11 the individuation one finds at work in the social realm
articulates itself in the relation between the mortal and the divine.
through sacrilege, the mortal and divine become separate spheres, each
with its own self-contained normative content, existing in a state of con-
tradiction with the other.
10 Aeschylus (525–456 bce ) deals in Prometheus Bound with the aftermath of

Prometheus’s clash with the king of the gods, zeus (Apollo’s father). Prometheus is one of
the titans (the earlier ruling generation of gods) who sides with the victorious zeus in the
Battle of the Gods (the titanomachy). subsequently, zeus commands him to create hu-
manity. he fashions pieces of clay into likenesses of the gods and breathes life and intellect
into them. Prometheus then feels sorry for these creatures’ lack of comfort in the world, so
contrary to zeus’s wishes he gives humanity the gift of fire, a gift that allows it to cook, warm
itself, and fashion tools. zeus responds to Prometheus’s act by having him chained up for
eternity, each day facing the torture of having his divine and consequently self-regenerating
liver eaten out of him by an eagle. this is the point at which the play begins. in the play
Prometheus, lamenting his earlier support for zeus in the titanomachy, presents himself
as the benefactor of humankind. Prometheus claims the credit for giving humanity not
only fire, but also civilization (the sciences, writing, and the like), and protecting it from
zeus’s wrath.
11 Nietzsche, clearly under the influence of Wagner at this stage in his thinking, con-
tends here that this sacrilege is Aryan and contrasts it with the semitic conception of ori-
ginal sin. the view that ancient Greek culture was Aryan, or even simply european, is of
course questionable. Nietzsche’s conception of the Aryan and the semitic, as is well known,
undergoes considerable change between The Birth of Tragedy and his later works starting
from Human, All Too Human.
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Nietzsche finds that Goethe’s poem “Prometheus” captures Aeschylus’s

conception supremely. here, the poet is depicted as fashioning human-
ity in his own image, creating a world whose characters suffer and cele-
brate but who are also mortals prepared to defy and struggle with the
gods as they strive to master the conditions of their own existence
through knowledge.12 Aeschylus and Goethe, Nietzsche argues, envision
an active, self-made humanity forging culture out of its own efforts.
Goethe’s poem depicts a situation in which “Man, rising to titanic stat-
ure, gains culture by his own efforts and forces the gods to enter into an
alliance with him because in his very own wisdom he holds their exis-
tence and their limitations in his hands” (The Birth of Tragedy, 9). this,
however, is hardly the most astonishing feature of Goethe’s poem. What
it encapsulates even more powerfully for Nietzsche is the impious tone
with which the ancient writer Aeschylus not only talks of the gods but
with which he addresses them. Goethe’s Prometheus is impious, a being
engaged in rebellion against the gods. this captures perfectly “the pro-
foundly Aeschylean demand for justice [der tiefe aeschyleische Zug nach
Gerechtigkeit]. the immeasurable suffering of the bold ‘individual’ on the
one hand and the divine predicament and intimation of a twilight of the
gods on the other, the way the power of these two worlds of suffering
compels a reconciliation, a metaphysical union – all this recalls in the
strongest possible manner the center and main axiom of the Aeschylean
view of the world which envisages Moira enthroned above gods and men
as eternal justice [ewige Gerechtigkeit]” (The Birth of Tragedy, 9). the indi-
vidual who strives necessarily suffers, for this is the price of impiety. Yet,
the gods, too, suffer as a consequence of their separation from and strug-
gle with humankind, for this struggle intimates their dependency, twi-
light, and passing. in terms of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, the gods are
subject to the demands of an all-encompassing justice no less than hu-
manity: fate (Moira) stands in judgement above all else, and has a power
that cannot be evaded even by a god. the separated realms of divine and
mortal each suffer, and are thereby forced back together again. Goethe,
in making manifest this demand for a metaphysical reconciliation be-
tween human and divine, illustrates something “astonishing” about
Aeschylus. the ancient tragedian, rightly understood, ought to shock
us with his impudent daring, for he does nothing less than put
“the Olympian world [of the gods] on the scales of his justice
[Gerechtigkeitswagschalen].” Aeschylus’s play asserts that gods and poet
12 the rebellious defiance of Goethe’s “Prometheus” is, as Nietzsche notes, well cap-
tured by the concluding lines: “here i sit, forming men / After my own image, / A race, to
be the same as me, / to suffer, to cry, / to revel and to rejoice / And not to respect
you, / Like me!”
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exist in a state of mutual reliance: the gods need the poet just as much as
he needs them. the poet consequently celebrates himself as one who
stands alongside the gods, for he is god-like in his artistic ability to create
and destroy. Aeschylus is akin to Prometheus, for as an artist he too is a
kind of titan: “in himself the titanic artist found the defiant faith that he
had the ability to create men and at least destroy Olympian gods, by
means of his superior wisdom which, to be sure, he had to atone for with
eternal suffering.” the poetic realm thereby stands alongside the divine
realm as its equal; the titanic poet challenges the gods for supremacy.
Nietzsche notes that the essence of the Promethean myth, which lies
in “the necessity of sacrilege imposed upon the titanically striving indi-
vidual,” is profoundly un-Apollonian. this is because “Apollo wants to
grant repose to individual beings precisely by drawing boundaries be-
tween them and by again and again calling these to mind as the most
sacred laws of the world [die heiligsten Weltgesetze], with his demands for
self knowledge and measure” (The Birth of Tragedy, 9). the Apollonian,
in other words, seeks to impose legislation concerning the relations be-
tween humanity and gods. From the Apollonian perspective, the law-
like social order of the everyday, mortal world has its analogue in the
divine kingdom of Olympus; the individual can rest content with his or
her place in the mortal order of things, since what is sanctioned on
earth receives validation from a parallel world of divine social norms. in
contrast, the Promethean and the Dionysian share a common attitude
of rebellion, revealed in their striving to transgress limits. Aeschylus’s
Prometheus is, like Oedipus, an epic hero who speaks as a manifesta-
tion of Dionysus: “the Prometheus of Aeschylus is a Dionysian mask.”
At the same time, Nietzsche adds, the “profound demand for justice”
he has already noted in Aeschylus “reveals … his paternal descent
from Apollo, the god of individuation and of boundaries of justice
[Gerechtigkeitsgrenzen].” Aeschylus’s Prometheus is, like sophocles’s
Oedipus, a figure simultaneously Apollonian and Dionysian. he is a be-
ing of duality, moving back and forth between Dionysian striving and
the Apollonian demand for order and recognition of just borders and
regulations governing the relations between humanity and the gods.
the difference between the passivity of Oedipus and the active striving
of Prometheus is, it turns out, merely apparent. the presentations of
Oedipus and Prometheus share a common fundamental “glory” in their
ability to encapsulate the duality of Dionysian and Apollonian elements,
for each overcomes the difference that separates immortals from mor-
tals and in doing so dazzles us with its daring. Art, in other words, offers
the means whereby we can catch a glimpse of the metaphysical synthesis
of two irreconcilable and conflicting spheres.
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the meaning that the glory of the shared Oedipal and Promethean
duality expresses can be summarized by the following proposition: “‘All
that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both [Alles Vorhandene
ist gerecht und ungerecht und in beidem gleich berechtigt]’” (The Birth of Tragedy,
9). in other words, when considered in its own terms, each of the incom-
patible worlds of human and immortal beings has right on its side. the
law and justice of the social realm are legitimate within the confines of
that realm, and it is the same with regard to the domain of the gods.
Both domains, however, suffer by being separated from one another.
each considered alone is a broken-off fragment, a part yearning for re-
unification within the whole and, through this yearning, condemned to
suffer. in tragedy’s representation of the heroic figure, be it Oedipus or
Prometheus, one witnesses the most heroic of attempts at such a reunifi-
cation. however, one also witnesses the consequences of such heroism:
the hero “in the attempt to transcend the curse of individuation and to
become the one world-being … suffers in his own person the contradic-
tion concealed in things, which means he commits sacrilege and suffers.”
seeking to overcome the heterogeneity that separates mortal and divine
brings about misery because doing so must involve shattering the iron
grip of two contending and incompatible domains of right. Myth as it
is engaged with by tragic drama thereby stands revealed as the source
of redemptive aesthetic insight, for it shows the painful consequences
of playing two different and incompatible games of justice.
4. Greek tragedy ultimately destroys itself through Euripides, who subordinates

tragedy to Socratic rationalistic fetishism. Tragic insight is replaced by a slovenly
optimism that prefigures lazy, self-contented, modern bourgeois culture, and dan-
gerous Dionysian mysteries are smothered beneath intellectual idleness. Socrates
is, however, scandalously original in his invention of the “theoretical man,” who
uses method to expose hidden “laws of nature.” In modernity, this method of ra-
tional explanation ultimately recoils into contradictory mythology as science en-
counters the limits of its possible knowledge. To the extent that it is dominated by
abstract reason, modern humanity lacks primordial self-understanding. This
malaise can be overcome by a rebirth of myth. Mythological sensibilities are culti-
vated by reflection on the mutual interdependence of art and people, myth and
morality, tragedy and state. The account of tragedy in the Birth of tragedy
now reveals its political aim to be the legitimization of the modern state and its
laws in authentic cultural experience rooted in myth. Myth offers an overarching
narrative of identity and so overcomes modern fragmentation. The realms of law
and politics, like the arts, benefit from the mythical aura that confers legitimacy
upon them. Modernity can learn from the ancient Greek State, which partook
of a sense of timelessness capable of inoculating it from the infelicities of daily
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existence. Myth thereby rescues experience from the ravages of modern secular
processes. The ills of modernity, it follows, can be cured by metaphysics.
Metaphysical ambition is political ambition – the ambition to ground culture,
state, law, and morality in a mythically inspired sense of universal justice.
the ultimate fate of Greek tragedy is ironic, given its redemptive aspect.
it destroys itself (The Birth of Tragedy, 11). Nietzsche points an accusing
finger at the last of the great tragedians, euripides.13 the introduction
of the spectator on to the stage was, Nietzsche argues, euripides’s most
notable achievement. this inaugurates a revolution in the use of lan-
guage and behaviour. From euripides’s example, the populace learns
how to use language in a subtle and sophisticated manner, it learns how
to debate: “through this revolution in ordinary language he made the
New comedy14 possible. For henceforth it was no longer a secret how …
everyday life could be represented on the stage. civic mediocrity, on
which euripides built all his political hopes, was now given a voice …
And so the Aristophanean euripides prides himself on having portrayed
the common, familiar, everyday life and activities of the people, about
which all are qualified to pass judgement” (The Birth of Tragedy, 11). With
euripides tragedy becomes democratized and degraded. the everyday
person immersed in their daily concerns is introduced into the drama,
and their desire as spectators to sit in judgement on its contents is vali-
dated. the consequence of this is a population that “now philosophized,
managed land and goods, and conducted lawsuits with unheard of cir-
cumspection” – in short, an increasingly articulate, political, and de-
manding populace, but one turned inexorably away from the terror
of Dionysian reality and incapable of Apollonian elegance. euripides,
then, splits the Dionysian element off from tragedy in an attempt “to re-
construct tragedy purely on the basis of an un-Dionysian art, morality
13 euripides (c. 480–409 bce ) develops the tragic form in a radical new direction,
creating characters of greater inner complexity, developing the use of irony, creating a
dramatic language that is more realistic and less heroic. euripides’s radicalism extends
even to his portrayal of the gods. Other hitherto marginalized aspects of Greek society are
also given voice in the drama. thus, for example, euripides gives prominent and powerful
roles to women and slave characters. it is euripides’s emphasis on the everyday, his en-
dowing of the market-place culture of Greek society with power and validity that Nietzsche
objects to, for this empowers the populace.
14 New comedy dates from around 320–250 b c e . it is associated most with the play-
wright Menander (c. 342–291 bce ) and later with the Roman Plautus (c. 254–184 b c e).
in it, the heroic has completely vanished and the chorus is demoted to a mere band of
musical accompaniment. the characters depicted in New comedy are based on normal
people, and are parodic stereotypes whose function is to provoke humour through their
predictable foibles. But no moral knowledge or social criticism can be gained from this
process.
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and world view” (The Birth of Tragedy, 12). however, euripides, Nietzsche
adds, is only a kind of “mask.” through him the voice of socrates speaks,
for the destruction of tragedy comes with the invention of a new concep-
tion of law that originated in socratic rationalism. this is the socratic
“supreme law [oberstes Gesetz],” which holds that “‘to be beautiful every-
thing must be intelligible’” and which reflects in aesthetic terms “the
socratic dictum, ‘Knowledge is virtue.’” cleaving to this canon of belief,
euripides turns on tragedy and, with the demands of this socratic prin-
ciple in mind, measures up all the individual parts. the significance of
language, character, dramatic structure, and choral music is revised by a
critical, “audacious intelligence” that thinks and speaks in socratic con-
cepts. the Dionysian-Apollonian opposition of Oedipus and Prometheus
is replaced by one that opposes Dionysus to socrates.
socrates, with his “one great cyclops eye” (The Birth of Tragedy, 14) is
straight away characterized by Nietzsche as someone unfit for the proper
appreciation of the tragic. his is a monocular conception of the world.
the restricted conceptual-rational domain of the socratic gaze is one in
which the fair lunacy of the tragic artist’s enthusiasm can never be per-
mitted to exist. he is a person “denied the pleasure of gazing into
Dionysian abysses.” tragedy, for socrates, does not transport us to the
realm of Dionysian insight; instead, it is perceived as something that is
really rather unreasonable. the world of tragedy is topsy-turvy: things
happen without sensible causal reason, things that ought to follow one
another in the sequence of events refuse to do so. A world as garish,
multiple, and heterogeneous as this can be nothing but detestable for
someone of a prudent and rational disposition. it is an art that cannot
tell the truth about existence. Nor is its audience a fit one for the incul-
cation of this truth, for this audience is not one of philosophers but of
deviant artists and poets. the victory of socratic thought is hence the
extirpation of the tragic.
Poetry, that key element of tragedy, cannot however be so easily con-
quered. Nietzsche notes that socrates’s pupil, Plato, may have destroyed
his own poems in order to become a follower – but this did not prevent
him from turning to poetry, in the form of the written dialogue, when he
needed to propound socratic maxims. in its flouting of “the strict old
law of the unity of linguistic form” platonic dialogue became the “tub”
on which a “shipwrecked” ancient poetry was floated and saved, albeit
now jammed into the narrow space demanded by socratic stipulations
(The Birth of Tragedy, 14).15 Poetry, the hub of tragic insight, is compelled
15 Nietzsche makes the interesting claim here that in Plato lie the origins of the novel
form.
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by the thought of socrates, via Plato, into a subordinate position in rela-

tion to a dialectically oriented rationality. in Plato’s writings, art is kept
under the careful surveillance of philosophical thought by being pegged
to the “trunk of dialectic” as forcibly and violently as the infant Oedipus’s
feet are stapled together by their iron pin. From this standpoint, the only
permissible art is the art that serves the interests of rationally perceived
truth. Platonic dialogue, Nietzsche argues, can now be recognized for
what it is: as a kind of enfeebled drama in which the figure of socrates
takes on the role of a “dialectical hero” who defends himself not through
heroic action but by way of drab argument. tragic sentiment recedes,
stifled by “the optimistic element in the nature of dialectic.” this opti-
mism inevitably strikes at tragic sensibility, overgrowing its “regions” and
driving it to an act of self-destruction in the shape of “the death-leap into
the bourgeois drama [bürgerliche Schauspiel]” (The Birth of Tragedy, 14).
it is hard to ignore the social and political resonance of Nietzsche’s
argument. the Platonic model and the dialogue’s hero – socrates – are
both proto-bourgeois. the Platonic aesthetic takes on the form of an
optimistic and contented middle-class spectacle, one that acts out the
maxim “Virtue is knowledge; one sins only out of ignorance; one who is
virtuous is happy.” in conformity with middle-class consumer mores, ig-
norance is held to be the source of all sin, knowledge is the equivalent of
virtue, and virtue equates to happiness. these three original forms of
bourgeois “optimism” seal the fate of tragedy no less than a lazily self-
contented optimism compromises the possibility of a regeneration of
modern culture. in such a context the virtuous hero is compelled to be a
dialectician. the consequence of this is the dragging down of Aeschylus’s
“transcendental resolution of justice [transscendentale Gerechtigkeitslösung]”
into a shallow and impudent “principle of ‘poetic justice’ with its custom-
ary deus ex machine” (The Birth of Tragedy, 14). the dangerous Dionysian
mysteries lurking behind existence are thus subverted by the bland com-
fort of a morally unproblematic divine intentionality – one that in reality
is only an extension of the bourgeois inclination to look for unproblem-
atic conclusions that safely reflect existing moral presuppositions.
socratism distorts the understanding of tragedy, asserting in its stead a
hollow self-confidence. Viewed from the Platonic standpoint, the chorus
now appears as a contingent feature of the drama rather than as its true
cause. even if in sophocles, Nietzsche notes, one might detect the seeds
of the chorus’s destruction, Plato’s confident, bourgeois optimism fin-
ishes the job, driving “music out of tragedy with the scourge of its syllo-
gisms.” As a result, “the essence of tragedy” is destroyed.
however much Nietzsche may object to socrates, he remains a figure
of awe. socrates is scandalously original. he goads with his irony and
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must be credited with the invention of “the type of the theoretical

man.” A person of this kind is akin to the artist, for the theoretician,
too, derives an endless satisfaction from what lies ready at hand in the
world. the theoretical person gains pleasure from uncovering what
lies around them, but their happiness, such as it is, does not spring
only from that. to be theoretical is to derive satisfaction not merely
from exposing things but from discovering hidden “laws of nature
[Naturgesetze]” by way of method. in the fetishistic cleaving to method
lies “the unshakeable faith that thought, using the thread of causality,
can penetrate the deepest abysses of being, and that thought is capable
not only of knowing being but even of correcting it. this sublime meta-
physical illusion accompanies science as an instinct and leads science
again and again to its limits at which it must turn into art – which is really
the aim of this mechanism” (The Birth of Tragedy, 15). considered in this
light, it turns out that socratic thought cannot ultimately counter or
extirpate myth. Rather, it eventually, and in spite of itself, reaffirms it.
When rational explanations fall short, myth emerges again as “the nec-
essary consequence, indeed purpose, of science.” it is hard not to no-
tice a commonality here between Nietzsche’s argument and the thesis
presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment.16 Like Nietzsche, Adorno and
horkheimer argue that there is always a point at which rational enlight-
enment recoils into the very myth it purports to have overcome. in a
similar manner, Nietzsche reveals socrates as “the mystagogue of sci-
ence.” it is socrates who first casts the net of a science of universal ambi-
tion over the world, he who sows the seeds of its hegemonic ambitions.
science becomes hegemonic in the only way it can: by way of rules
dressed up as iron laws, even “actually holding out the prospect of
the lawfulness of an entire solar system [Gesetzlichkeit eines ganzen
Sonnensystems].” socrates, the archetype of the “theoretical optimist,”
cleaves to an unshakeable faith in the discoverability of the nature of
things, in the contention that reality can be encircled and encapsulated
by the laws of conceptual thought. this is the illusion that provokes and
inspires the spirit of science. this is also the illusion that brings science
to grief. the scientist strives for knowledge, but in the end encounters
the boundary limit of this knowledge and from this standpoint looks
“into what defies illumination.” this, for Nietzsche, is the moment at
which tragedy returns. “When they see to their horror how logic coils
up at these boundaries and finally bites its own tail – suddenly the new
16 see horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
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form of insight breaks through, tragic insight which, merely to be en-

dured, needs art as a protection and remedy.”17
Nietzsche characterizes his own times as having reached this stage of
disillusionment with science. theory has lost its appeal, leaving the
bland legacy of the joyless “Alexandrian man,” a being who is fundamen-
tally “a librarian and corrector of proofs” devoid of creative impulse (The
Birth of Tragedy, 19). the answer to this exhausted state is a return to
tragedy by way of “true musical tragedy,” which can once again inculcate
the truth of myth (The Birth of Tragedy, 22).18 Myth, we are reminded, lies
at the heart of tragedy (The Birth of Tragedy, 25). the ability to respond
to the mythic element in tragic drama, Nietzsche argues, is what identi-
fies the presence of genuine aesthetic sensibility. One is endowed with
the vestiges of this sensibility, or one responds in the socratic-critical id-
iom to the tragic. One greets the mythical narrative of tragedy in the
spirit of a suspension of disbelief, or one does not. the difficulty of fos-
tering an attitude of acceptance resides in modern culture’s historicism.
such is the denuded nature of contemporary sensibility that dusty schol-
arly understanding is the most likely means of attaining a grasp of the
nature of myth (The Birth of Tragedy, 23). Modern society, by implication,
stands on the edge of the precipice of a headlong fall into the demise of
mythical sensibility and this encapsulates its finitude and fragility, for
“without myth every culture loses the healthy natural power of its cre-
ativity: only a horizon defined by myth completes and unifies a whole
cultural movement.” Myth, then, is the indispensible condition of true
cultural life. All our powers of fantasy, our Apollonian dream inclina-
tions, are saved from their aimless wanderings only by myth. What
Nietzsche here calls “the images of myth” are in effect pedagogical tools,
signposts of behaviour that guide the young to maturity by giving them
a means of interpreting the “struggles” of life. in order to grow up and
turn out well we need to mature in myth. Myth makes sense of the world
for us in a way that we do not notice but unconsciously acknowledge
through our actions and interpretations of our environment. Myth is
17 Nietzsche here reveals his early adherence to the thought of Kant and schopenhauer:
“the extraordinary courage of Kant and Schopenhauer” has brought about “the victory over
the optimism concealed in the essence of logic – an optimism that is the basis of our cul-
ture” (The Birth of Tragedy, 18). such optimism, Nietzsche claims, thought of space, time,
and causality as universal and “entirely unconditional laws [gänzlich unbedingte Gesetze].” to
follow Kant and schopenhauer and step beyond this naive conception of the universal
presages an era where tragic culture is again possible, where wisdom is once again more
valued than science.
18 in The Birth of Tragedy the path of this return is delineated by the music of Wagner.
Like so much else in this work, Nietzsche is to change his mind about this, too.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 36 2013-09-20 11:36:07

our great teacher. Myth serves as a means of grounding law. Modern life,
it follows, is not so safely removed from myth as its scientific self-image
might suggest, but rather stands increasingly and unconsciously threat-
ened by its loss. the need for myth cannot be gainsaid: “even the state
knows no more powerful unwritten laws [ungeschriebnen Gesetze]” than
the “mythical foundation” that secures its connection with religion (The
Birth of Tragedy, 23). the modern state rests on primeval mythical repre-
sentations, and myth now stands revealed as underpinning its legal-
juridical structure. it is not written statutes that characterize the essence
of modern government, as its liberal-democratic ethos tends to suggest,
but rather the unwritten mythical presuppositions that form the “funda-
ment” upon which these laws are inscribed. What is written and codified
as law is, in this way, interpretable as an unconscious commentary on
an unacknowledged teaching of the mythic principles and signs that
ground cultural self-understanding.
contrast the mythically literate person with the “abstract man, untu-
tored by myth” and one is confronted by a kind of spiritual lawlessness
and emptiness: “abstract education; abstract morality [Sitte]; abstract law
[Recht]; the abstract state” (The Birth of Tragedy, 23). such a person is a
symptom of a culture that has forsaken its relation to the sacred in favour
of bleached socratic reason. in a culture of this kind, the creative imagi-
nation roves unhindered by native myth and consequently lacks the ori-
entation that is endowed by having the sense of a fixed and holy founding
place in the order of things. the abstract man lacks a sense of being at
home in the world he inhabits. this is a person deprived of a neat fit with
their environment; no sense of primordial place grounds their self-
understanding. Lacking an inner resource of meaning, the inhabitant of
this kind of abstract culture will, Nietzsche notes, seek mythic satisfac-
tion elsewhere, namely by feeding “wretchedly on all other cultures.”
Modernity is exposed as parasitic. Ours is the era of “unsatisfied modern
culture.” A derelict and sterile cultural space has emerged out of the
triumph of the socratic project to destroy myth and replace it with the
hegemony of the abstract concept. the “all-consuming” contemporary
craving for knowledge, “the assembling around one of other cultures …
what does all this point to, if not the loss of myth, the loss of the mythical
home, the mythical maternal womb?”19 the consequence of cleaving to
fetishistic and illusory socratic rationality is that it leaves us in a state of
19 Let us merely note in passing that such a lack could point to the fact of colonial ex-
pansion, to the historically decisive european drive to colonize and exploit other cultures,
of which the organizing of other cultural domains into convenient dishes for consumption
is one telling symptom. One might add that Nietzsche himself, a consumer of indian
25660_Sedgwick.indb 37 2013-09-20 11:36:07

nomadism.20 Worldly modernity thereby emerges as something destruc-

tive and decentred. it is obsessed by a desire for knowledge, wanderlust,
an idolizing of the present, and yet unable to think beyond the confines
of the spirit of its own times.
For Nietzsche, the possibility of a rebirth of German myth in moder-
nity begins by affirming the fundamental relatedness of what appear to
be autonomous spheres. the fact that Greek tragedy and culture died as
a consequence of the socratic tearing apart of the Dionysian-Apollonian
duality makes one duty bound to engage in “serious reflection” on the
interdependence of art and people, myth and morality, tragedy and state
(The Birth of Tragedy, 23). With this claim, the spheres of aesthetics and
ethnicity, mythology and values, tragedy and political governance are all
conjoined. Nietzsche’s ruminations on the nature of the Dionysian and
Apollonian, on tragic drama, heroism, the tensions between divine and
human, nature and culture, are now revealed to serve an explicit politi-
cal purpose. All these things revolve around the problem of delineating
the authentic cultural conditions that can serve to legitimate the author-
ity of the state and its laws by grounding them in an authentic mythical
cultural experience. thinking in terms of myth, as the Greeks of the
tragic era did and as Nietzsche urges us to here, means to think in terms
of an overarching narrative of identity in relation to which one compul-
sively relates one’s experiences. the act of thinking this relation over-
comes the threat of fragmentation posed by the peculiarly bleached
individuation that erupts from socratic rationalism, reincorporating in-
dividual experience into a timeless and universal whole that is capable of
once again enriching and validating it. the Greeks interpreted all events
in terms of mythical narrative: for them everything was related to the
eternal and in this way was endowed with mysterious timelessness. the
domains of law and politics no less than the arts can partake of the mythi-
cal aura that confers legitimacy in this way. the invocation of their rela-
tion to myth endows them with meaning. the Greek state, Nietzsche tells
religious and philosophical thought as a result of his youthful love of schopenhauer, is no

less prey to this.
20 historical thought, too (which is an ironic consequence of socratic rational absolut-
ism) destroys the mythical grasping of the environment one inhabits. With historical as
opposed to mythical consciousness comes the denigration of the tragic works that dwell in
the proximity of myth. in conceptualizing itself historically, the secular mind initiates “a
break with the unconscious metaphysics of its previous existence, together with all its eth-
ical consequences. Greek art and pre-eminently Greek tragedy delayed above all the de-
struction of myth. One had to destroy tragedy, too, in order to be able to live away from the
soil of home, uninhibited, in the wilderness of thought, custom, and deed” (The Birth of
Tragedy, 23).
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us, dipped itself into this sense of timelessness as a means of unburden-

ing itself from the taint of the infelicities of daily existence. the same
principle holds no less for the national-political structures of today:
“any people … is worth only as much as it is able to press upon its expe-
riences the stamp of the eternal” (The Birth of Tragedy, 23). Metaphysical
ambition is the precondition of political and cultural endurance. to
eternalize one’s experiences via myth is to retrieve them from the rav-
ages wrought by modern secular processes and ground them in a divine
justice. De-secularization, which is the reinvigoration of myth, testifies to
the “unconscious inner conviction of the relativity of time” that exposes
“the true, that is, metaphysical, meaning of life.” Modernity, it follows,
can be overcome only by metaphysics. Metaphysical ambition is political
ambition, an ambition concerning the interrelation of a culture, state,
law, and morality held together by a rejuvenated, mythically inspired
awareness of the universal.
The Birth of Tragedy, then, calls upon Dionysian myth to ground
Apollonian individuated social life as a cure to modernity’s travails. in
this way the Apollonian-Dionysian duality is affirmed as a potent social
force. the consequence of this affirmation will be a culture of aesthetic
sensibility that combines Apollonian grace with Dionysian authenticity.
With this, the emptiness of modern existence is swept away, leaving the
suffering that necessarily comes from individuated social life justified
by a redemptive aesthetic governed by what Nietzsche calls the “eternal
law of justice [Gesetze ewiger Gerechtigkeit]” (The Birth of Tragedy, 25). this
law imposes a rigorous, interconnected proportionality that dictates that
every Dionysian moment of terror-ridden awareness must be compen-
sated for by a redemptive Apollonian moment of energizing transfigura-
tion. the violent “Dionysian subsoil of the world” upon which Apollonian
culture rests can in this way be contained, retained, and even cultivated.
in turn, mythical justification is bestowed upon a now authentic culture
in payment for its faithful cleaving to Dionysian wisdom. social order,
the state, and the life of the individual are all endowed with an Apollonian
aesthetic grandeur that signals the hidden presence of the Dionysian
reality that legitimizes them.
5. Nietzsche’s continuing interest in the interrelation between justice, myth, cul-

ture and the Alexandrian consciousness of modernity is revealed in the second of
the untimely Meditations. History, Nietzsche agues, must be assessed in terms
of its value for “life.” History is necessary for existence and it can liberate us from
the tyranny of past beliefs, but a surfeit is debilitating. Modernity exhibits all the
symptoms of the malaise caused by such a surfeit. The creativity made possible by
existing in the essentially “unjust” suprahistorical condition that is the source
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from which all just and unjust deeds spring is impossible for it. Thus weighed
down, modernity has become self-negating and uncreative. What is needed to
counter this is a history infused with art, one capable of criticizing itself and so
serving the creative unhistorical forces that are necessary for culture. There are
three types of history, “monumental,” “antiquarian,” and “critical.” An analysis
of the first two reveals why the third is needed.
Nietzsche’s obsession with Apollo and Dionysus does not appear to last
long.21 in the four essays that make up the Untimely Meditations – the first
of which is published in 1873, one year after The Birth of Tragedy, the last
in 1876 – the Apollonian is mentioned only once,22 the Dionysian not
at all. however, in “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life”
(Untimely Meditations, ii), Nietzsche returns soon enough to questions
concerning the interrelation between justice, culture, myth, and the
Alexandrian consciousness of modernity. indeed, the second of the
Meditations can in some respects be read as a supplement to the text on
tragedy. Just as The Birth of Tragedy concludes by affirming the legitimacy
of the timeless empowerment of myth-inspired art as a curative for mod-
ern cultural and political travails, so the meditation on history develops
the same thematic strategy of opposing the timeless creative desire of
artistic creativity to the uncreative pathology of modern critical-historical
consciousness (Untimely Meditations, ii, 7). the general shape of the ar-
gument of the second meditation is simple enough. the consequences
of history oppose those of art. history is a necessary component of
“life,”23 but a surfeit of it is damaging. Where art enhances existence by
casting a saving veil of illusion over it, Apollonian-style, history exposes,
demythologizes, and thereby destroys. Only a history somehow trans-
formed into a kind of redeeming art would be able to preserve and en-
courage the creative instincts so necessary to a thriving culture. Modernity
has arrived at the point where it suffers from its sense of history in a way
that entraps it, forcing it into an attitude of self-abnegation.24 the his-
torical sense thus presents modernity with the troubled vision of a world
21 Dionysus is to return in Nietzsche’s late works, but this return takes place within a
radically different framework.
22 see Untimely Meditations, ii, “On the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” 10.
23 Nietzsche does not bother to define this term and nor will i. suffice it to say that the
notion of “life” as it is used in this essay is better regarded as a point of departure for argu-
ment than as pertaining to a definite and easily summarized concept.
24 history tells the present historical age of great past eras that were unhistorical and
yet achieved more culturally than it can imagine achieving itself, e.g. the Greeks. to be
born in the time of modern historical knowledge, in contrast to the unhistorical world of
the Greeks, is hence to find oneself trapped in a kind of premature old age.
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without future heirs. the only thing to do to overcome this is to expose

the historical sense to the sharpness of its own critical edge as a prelude
to its transfiguration at the hands of art (Untimely Meditations, ii, 8).
Nietzsche, oddly perhaps at first glance, arrives at his conclusion by
way of an account of the nature of happiness. the striving for happiness
allows all forms of living being to cleave to existence.25 Being happy
means being unfettered by past memories, for memories have a nasty
habit of interfering with the possibility of contentment (Untimely
Meditations, ii, 1). the person least fettered by memory will thus most
likely be the most content; but every judgement such a person makes will
necessarily involve him or her committing “injustice [Ungerechtigkeit].”
to be “unjust” in the sense used here clearly means being unjust to
one’s environment – it is an epistemic injustice of interpretive violence.
Questions of truth and questions of justice are thereby conjoined.
Nietzsche (prefiguring ruminations developed in his mature thought)
argues that a kind of healthy state of unreflective endorsement of one’s
beliefs makes life possible and even enhances it. Being seized by an all-
consuming passion, for example, shatters the boundaries of conven-
tional life; it overturns norms by drawing one into the “unjust condition
[ungerechteste Zustand]” of blinkered ingratitude toward the past that
made one what one is. this condition is “unhistorical, anti-historical
through and through,” yet paradoxically it is also “the womb not only of
the unjust but of every just deed too [der Geburtsschooss nicht nur einer
ungerechten, sondern vielmehr jeder rechten That].” Without the injustice ac-
companying decision, no artist would be able to create, no commander
win in battle, no nation attain freedom. thus, social order – the domain
of responsibility, fairness, and justice – rests upon an unarticulated and
violent injustice that represses memory and the bite of conscience.
unhistorical action is creative but amoral: a “blindness and injustice
in the soul of the doer [Blindheit und Ungerechtigkeit in der Seele des
Handelnden]” is the precondition of all great historical deeds (Untimely
Meditations, ii, 1). But such injustice is creative. Nietzsche now gives this
unjust condition a name: it is the “suprahistorical.” history, it follows, is
permeated and driven by suprahistorical forces.
suprahistorical injustice may be a repository of great potential, since it
is a precondition of all genuine action,26 but it is problematic, too. it
does violence to the world of experience, suppressing knowledge not
25 this is a view that Nietzsche will come to reject in his mature writings.
26 clearly, there are many examples of human doing that do not preclude historical
states of mind. For Nietzsche, however, such doings are nothing more than the thoughtless
articulation of norms. Properly understood, a genuine action (a deed) is something that
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amenable to it. history, whatever its dangers, can correct this tendency,
for it can function as curative and enhancement to suprahistorical excess
(Untimely Meditations, ii, 2). Nietzsche distinguishes between three types
of history, each of which can either enhance life or bring about its de-
generation: “monumental,” “antiquarian,” and “critical.” the value of
the monumentally conceived past lies in its implication that since great-
ness was once possible it is possible again. Yet monumental history does
unutterable violence to the past, wiping away the myriad differences that
distinguish historical periods, and erasing the essential contingency un-
derlying historical development. Monumental history is selective history.
it can inspire fanaticism and stupidity and is susceptible to becoming the
history of the tyrant, thereby marginalizing the path of genuine creativity
that for Nietzsche is at the heart of living culture. Antiquarian history
is a kind of curative to monumentalism (Untimely Meditations, ii, 3).
Antiquarian understanding regards itself as the extension of a living tra-
dition. it is instinctively communitarian, imbuing existence with a feel-
ing of justification derived from a sense of belonging. At the same time,
the antiquarian mind lacks any sense of the differences of value and
proportion necessary if the elements that make up the past are to be
done “genuine justice [wahrhaft gerecht]” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 3). the
bad consequence of the antiquarian attitude is its cultivation of a stifling
reverence that runs counter to the demands of life. these shortcomings
tell us why we need critical history.
6. Critical history is a curative for the shortcomings of other historical attitudes.

It exposes the contingency at work in past societies and overturns the authority of
tradition. When critical history speaks, however, the voice of an objective justice is
not really what is heard. What speaks is, rather, life, which judges in a manner
that “is always unmerciful, always unjust.” Used in this way, critical history does
the violent bidding of life, liberating the present from the past through an act of
nihilistic judgement. The revelation of the essential contingency of past human
existence opens the way to new experiments of living. Life needs to remember no
less than it needs, on occasion, to forget. We are beings of second nature, bundles
of the accumulated propensities and errors of our ancestors. This second nature
makes life possible, but it can also hinder its development and thriving. Critical
knowledge thus bespeaks life’s requirement that the impedances of second nature
need on occasion to be overcome. Such overcoming has a limit, however, since it is
impossible to divest ourselves of all prejudices. Hence, what is cultivated is a
does not conform to norms but steps beyond them: it is creative and, in the case of the
genuine philosopher, legislative. see chapters 3 and 4.
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renewed second nature capable of transforming, incorporating, or negating the

nature that precedes it.
With Nietzsche’s discussion of critical history, we enter the realm of the

court of law. it is not always the case, Nietzsche notes, that the suprahis-
torical blanking out of the past is good for us. sometimes it is necessary
to dissolve those aspects of the past that act as a fetter and impedance to
the future. this is achieved by taking what one wishes to overcome and
“bringing it before the tribunal [Gericht], scrupulously examining it and
finally condemning it; every past, however, is worthy to be condemned
– for that is the nature of human things: human violence and weakness
have always played a mighty role in them” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 3).
critical history exposes an essential frailty and contingency at work in
past events and societies. in effect, it overturns the authority of tradition,
for traditions are revealed as accidents that can have no ultimate claim
upon us, for even given the same starting point things could have turned
out differently.
critical history thus sits like a judge presiding over a court that has put
the entire past in the dock. however, Nietzsche comments, this is not
what it might seem. critical history does not proffer a justice that would
seek a fair and objective ruling. When critical history speaks, a “dark,
driving power that insatiably thirsts for itself” can be heard. this is the
harsh voice of life and its ruling “is always unmerciful, always unjust [im-
mer ungnädig, immer ungerecht], because it has never proceeded out of a
pure well of knowledge; but in most cases the sentence would be the
same even if it were pronounced by justice itself. ‘For all that exists is
worthy of perishing. so it would be better if nothing existed.’” critical
history thus does the violent bidding of life, liberating the present from
monumental and antiquarian attitudes through nihilistic judgement.
Boundary stones can now be toppled, new ways of living experimented
with, and new self-understandings cultivated. if it is to create, life needs
at times to remember as much as it needs to forget:
[t]his same life that requires forgetting demands a temporary sus-

pension of this forgetfulness; it wants to be clear as to how unjust
[wie ungerecht] the existence of anything – a privilege, a caste, a dy-
nasty, for example – is, and how greatly this thing deserves to per-
ish. then its past is regarded critically, then one takes the knife to
its roots, then one cruelly tramples over every kind of piety. it is al-
ways a dangerous process … For since we are the outcome of ear-
lier generations … of their aberrations, passions and errors, and
indeed of their crimes; it is not possible to free oneself wholly from
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this chain … the best we can do is confront our inherited and he-
reditary nature with our knowledge of it, and through a new, stern
discipline combat our inborn heritage and implant in ourselves a
new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, so that our first nature
withers away. it is … always a dangerous attempt because it is so
hard to know the limit to denial of the past and because second na-
tures are usually weaker than first … But here and there a victory is
nonetheless achieved, and for the combatants, for those who em-
ploy critical history for the sake of life, there is even a noteworthy
consolation: that of knowing that this first nature was once a sec-
ond nature and that every victorious second nature will become
a first. (Untimely Meditations, ii, 3)
it becomes clear from this passage that Nietzsche regards us as creatures

defined by our inheritance, creatures of second nature. We are articula-
tions of the accumulated tendencies, sensibilities, and errors of judge-
ment of our forebears. this ensemble of characteristics, while making
life possible for us, since we ultimately originated in them, can also ob-
struct future thriving. consequently, we are driven by the demands of life
to counter what impedes it with critical knowledge. in our critical assas-
sination of the past we stand as representatives of burgeoning life. One
should note, however, the peril that critical liberation from the past can
engender. We can shatter the past’s grip on us through critical history,
Nietzsche argues, but by turning on our own origins in this way we ques-
tion the very conditions that gave rise to our kind. this is a perilous thing
to do since such conditions might also be necessary for our continuance.
it is for this reason that, ultimately, critical historical understanding
makes impossible demands, for we cannot abandon all the prejudices
that have gone to making us the kinds of creatures we are. consequently,
the best that can be done is to cultivate a new second nature that sup-
plants and thereby overcomes the nature that precedes it.27 At the same
time, the danger of critical history is that it cultivates a pompous self-
importance that does its own specific violence to the past and present
and thereby fosters spiritual vacuity.
27 it is hard not to notice in this discussion of history attitudes that will come to have an
increasing prominence in Nietzsche’s mature philosophy. the human being is already con-
ceived of as the as yet unfixed animal, to recall a phrase from Beyond Good and Evil. We do
not have a determined nature but are second nature through and through. this means
that we are first and foremost creatures of culture and cultivation.
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7. History weighs down modernity with scientific knowledge: culture is no longer

lived but studied. The consequences of this are spiritual vacuity and modern bar-
barism. Modernity’s extensive accumulation of historical knowledge of past tradi-
tions and morals looks like cultural wealth. It encourages modern society to
envisage itself to be the most self-aware, objective, and just age there has ever been.
The essential contingency underlying human fate is thereby ignored and a false
sense of justice with regard to the past is cultivated. Genuine justice with regard to
the past is antithetical to modern attitudes. Justice cannot be deduced; it over-
whelms and is obeyed because its commands are unconditional. An uncompromis-
ing “will to justice” makes itself manifest as a desire for truth. Justice is thus the
highest virtue. It is also the most susceptible to corruption. In the scholar, for in-
stance, a powerful sense of justice can be placed in service of the professional self-
advancement that panders to conformism. The past is denigrated as a mere means,
as something in service of the glorification of the unreflective present. Modern
history is thus prey to becoming “bad mythology” in so far as it is guided by an
uncritical desire to subject the past to bold generalizations. Genuine history,
Nietzsche argues, is not a matter of generating “laws” from empirical observation
(the pursuit of a false objectivity) but rather the art of interpretation. It must be an
extension of “the vigour of the present,” not an apparently detached and unin-
volved indifference dressed as “objectivity.” Genuine history speaks in tones akin
to that of an ancient oracular voice. It expresses passionate involvement and has
an authenticity revealed by its expressing anew the universally recognized condi-
tions of human existence. Genuine history does not judge past failings; it indicts
the present’s shortcomings and so exposes the false consciousness of its own times.
With this, the divine justice of the Birth of tragedy is again affirmed. Greek
culture, properly understood, calls us to acknowledge the paucity of the present by
serving as a paradigm for what culture can be and how it can be created. The past
of Ancient Greece teaches us how to live now by example and so serves as an exem-
plar for the rejuvenation of tired modernity. With this insight, history, as a con-
duit conveying the inspiration set by example, can be put to work in the interests
of life. The second meditation thereby affirms the metaphysical revelation of truth
and justice celebrated in the Birth of tragedy. It is the rejection of this meta-
physics and the search for a new conception of justice that most characterizes
Nietzsche’s mature thought.
Nietzsche situates his account of critical history in the context of moder-

nity. history has become “the science of universal becoming” (Untimely
Meditations, ii, 4) and we are weighed down by this scientific knowledge.
the consequence of this is that we moderns are creatures of hitherto
unknown contradictoriness. the content is there but the form is lacking.
We are “cultured” internally, but not externally: our culture is not lived
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but theorized. today, Nietzsche notes, “our modern culture is not a living
thing … it is not a real culture at all but only a kind of knowledge of
culture.” We are becoming ever more inwardly oriented, more “subjec-
tive.” the view expressed in The Birth of Tragedy, which holds modern to
mean being a looter of the cultures of other eras, is here reiterated. We
cram our world with the artifacts, customs, traditions, and achievements
of other ages and societies because “we moderns have nothing whatever
of our own” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 4). An obsession with history testi-
fies to spiritual emptiness. the natural response to the plenitude of stim-
uli that modern life offers is superficiality, and this is the essence of
modern barbarism. Genuine culture, Nietzsche tells us, is a unity of
form and content that modernity singularly lacks – a fact exemplified
in Germany, where all is conformity to the contemporary economic-
industrial demand for efficiency and ease.28 the modern life is spiritu-
ally attenuated and glutted with artefacts borrowed or pilfered from the
histories of others. the danger posed by this surfeit lies in the fact that
it can be mistaken for wealth. the possession of a vast stock of knowl-
edge concerning past practices and values misleads modernity into
thinking “that it possesses the rarest of virtues, justice, to a greater de-
gree than any other age” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 5). We become in-
clined to see ourselves as morally superior to the past since we have
picked up, used, and incorporated so much of it: as we look back on the
past we tend to look down on it, too.
the notion that modern humanity is morally superior to the past be-
cause it is more just comes from the celebrated “objectivity” that is
the hallmark of contemporary critical historical practice. is it, Nietzsche
asks, fair to argue that this “well known ‘objectivity’” endows the modern
person with “the right to call himself strong, that is to say just [gerecht],
and just in a higher degree than men of other ages?” can it be the case
that this objectivity, such as it is, has its origin in an increased “need and
demand for justice [Gerechtigkeit]?” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 6). certainly,
the complacent belief that one is better than others is a dangerous be-
lief. After all, the fortunate person who feels themselves superior to
others less fortunate is probably more stupid than not. such a person has
28 if one takes a walk “through a German city – compared with the distinct national
qualities displayed in foreign cities, all the conventions here are negative ones, everything is
colourless, worn out, badly copied, negligent, everyone does as he likes but what he likes is
never forceful and well considered.” this is a world dominated by the rule of haste and a
general addiction to comfort and conformity. Nietzsche then interprets the celebrated
German national characteristic of “subjectivity” as a symptom of the overwhelming power of
external social forces rather than as a sign of “inner” personality (Untimely Meditations, ii, 4).
25660_Sedgwick.indb 46 2013-09-20 11:36:07

an attitude that betrays a lack of understanding of the moral and amoral

luck of life. One’s good fortune, after all, is a matter of contingency, not
God-given destiny. A person who is highly valued because of their sport-
ing prowess, their financial acuity, or their intellectual and communica-
tive skills, does not merely need to be fortunate enough to be born with
the propensity for their prowess. they need to be fortunate enough to
be born into a place and time where these skills are valued – and valued
in a way that is amenable to them, given their other character traits. such
a person also needs to be born into a situation (in fact, really a kind of
ensemble of situations consisting of particularities of social class and
generalities of theological, secular, and political order) that enables
these skills to be developed and exploited. A person’s erroneous belief in
their superiority over others signals a failure to register the necessary
contingency at work in life, and has the consequence of making them
continually worse. For Nietzsche, modernity, which is convinced of its
moral superiority, is no different from such a deluded individual. the
delusion that we moderns command a superior sense of justice will
cause us to become ever “more unjust [ungerechter]” than we already
are. Justice, Nietzsche now asserts, is the most highly valued of virtues,
but it is not a virtue associated with a cold, disinterested objectivity: “in
truth, no one has a greater claim to our veneration than he who pos-
sesses the drive to and strength for justice [Gerechtigkeit].29 For the high-
est and rarest virtues are united and concealed in justice as in an
unfathomable ocean that receives streams and rivers from all sides and
takes them into itself. the hand of the just man [des Gerechten] who is
empowered to judge no longer trembles when it holds the scales; he sets
weight upon weight with inexorable disregard for himself, his eye is un-
clouded as it sees the scales rise and fall, and his voice is neither harsh
nor tearful when he pronounces the verdict” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 6).
Nietzsche here offers a rather idealized and sentimentalized image of a
legal proceeding in which the judgement moves from a state of venial
“doubt” to strict “certainty,” where tolerant indulgence is supplanted by
an impersonal demand concerning what action is warranted. the rare
virtue of generosity gives way to the even rarer demand that one be just.
to be a creature of the virtues means to be endowed not merely with the
propensity to pursue a virtue, but also with the driving force of disci-
pline sufficient to fulfil the demands that such a pursuit places upon
one. the just person is a kind of point of intersection of virtues that, in
29 it is interesting to note here that consistently Nietzsche conceives of even our virtues
in terms of the concept of the drive (Trieb). this is a notion that becomes increasingly im-
portant in his writings.
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their coming together, endow him or her with authority. such a person
judges with what comes most closely to an attitude of selflessness, and it
is this that makes for the authority of justice. this authority springs from
something mysterious and impenetrable, it is an “unfathomable sea”
that in its combination of a multiplicity of sources into an uncanny
unity defies analysis and inspires a sense of awe.30 As with Nietzsche’s
conception of the eternal justice of tragedy, here, too, justice depends
upon something that cannot be deduced but is rather simply obeyed due
to its capacity to overwhelm.
such justice, it hardly needs to be added, is necessarily turned even
against the one who sits in judgement. selflessness of this kind is not the
same as so-called value-neutral “objectivity,” for it entails sacrifice and
therefore involvement on the part of the judge. to “hold the scales” and
lay weight upon weight in an inexorable manner means to refuse to be
swayed in one’s deliberations, even by self-interest, for in doing so one
must place one’s own identity on trial to see if it is equal to the task of
seeking justice. the just human being, Nietzsche adds unsurprisingly, is
destined for torture as a result of this. to be just is to be confronted by
the demands of an “impossible virtue” that comes from being “the most
venerable exemplar of the species of man.” Desiring justice means desir-
ing truth above all things, but not in the form of a detached and “cold,
ineffectual knowledge, but as a regulating and punishing judge; truth
not as the egoistic possession of the individual, but as the sacred right
[heilige Berechtigung] to overturn all the boundary-stones of egoistic pos-
sessions.” the demand for truth thus stakes its claims in terms of entitle-
ment. the one who seeks truth seeks a kind of justice whose legitimacy
30 Lawrence Lampert notes that this passage from the second Untimely Meditation both
invokes the notion of a “solitary few” who are called to the task of fulfilling justice through
their deeds and contrasts them with “their look-alikes, fanatics whose will to justice is not
guided by the strength of judgement that reveals the just to them” (Nietzsche and Modern
Times, 290). At this point, Lampert argues, the text attains its most profound level of discus-
sion: if all justice rests on a foundation of strength of judgement and the truly just person’s
identity is only guaranteed by their strength of judgement being guided by truth, by what
means does one uncover this truth and thereby “separate Judge from Fanatic?” Lampert
additionally comments that here Nietzsche is obviously “speaking of a justice grander than
the application of some already present code of just and unjust; he is speaking of the giving
of such codes, the bringing of a new good and evil or good and bad, the founding act of
the philosophic legislator … the highest exemplars desire truth in order to legislate; truth
provides the sacred legitimation of their justice.” this quote makes manifest the link be-
tween a text that is, Lampert says, “pre-Nietzschean” (291) in so far as it lacks a compelling
account of justice and truth and is, instead, content to invoke these notions rather than
analyse them, and the mature thinker who embarks upon rethinking philosophy as a legis-
lative enterprise in concrete, naturalistic terms – see the account of this in chapter 5.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 48 2013-09-20 11:36:08

springs from redefining the markers that map out the space of a posses-
sive, subjective self-interest. the judge’s desire for truth is evidence of
an uncompromising “will to justice,” and it is this will that grounds
its claim to legitimacy. it is only to the extent that the truthful person
has the absolute will to be just, Nietzsche argues, that anything can be
deemed “great” in the all-pervasive and thoughtless glorification of the
striving for truth that is fashionable in contemporary society. the value
of wanting truth, in other words, resides in the fact “that it has its root in
justice [das seine Wurzel in der Gerechtigkeit hat]” (Untimely Meditations, ii,
6). truth and justice are therefore conjoined in the second of the
Untimely Meditations in a manner reminiscent of the socratic dialectical
binding of knowledge, virtue, and justice to one another. Because of its
essential link to truth, justice is the most valuable of virtues, of greater
worth than magnanimity – but it is also the rarest. it is also the most
liable to being corrupted by undesirable forces masquerading under
its banner. Justice is consequently always a complex matter, since sorting
out the truthful person from the charlatan is never going to be easy.
the “justice drive [Gerechtigkeitstriebe]” alone is not sufficient for truth-
fulness or justice to be realized (Untimely Meditations, ii, 6). taken singly,
a drive of this kind can lead to distorted narrowness and fanaticism. it
needs to be balanced by a sense of judgement. Modern scholarship man-
ifests this danger. When implanted into the “historical virtuoso,” the
“stern and great sense of justice,” which is the kernel of “the so-called
drive to truth,” does not, it turns out, cultivate the most just and fair-
minded of people. to be sure, the historical scholar has a kind of objec-
tivity, Nietzsche agrees. however, this kind of objectivity is akin to the
passivity of a “sounding board” that resonates sympathetically with its
environment. this person’s sense of justice is unappealing because it is
merely passive. No moving around of boundary stones, no challenging
of the dominant norms of the time, is going to spring from scholars of
this kind. At best, they are tolerant of their own times and harshly con-
demnatory of past societies and cultures. this is the image of scholar as
arch conformist. their aim is to be professionally (and “profoundly”) suc-
cessful, and conformity marks the best path to success. the modern his-
torian as presented here takes on the mantle of an easily swayed
courtroom judge. this is someone who fails in their duty because they
passively reflect popular opinion: “the will to be just is there, as is the
pathos attending the office of judge: but all their verdicts are false, for
approximately the same reason as the verdicts of ordinary court juries
are false” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 6). conformity of this kind reinforces
popular prejudice by attacking the past, and endorsing thoughtless self-
affirmation as people rest content in a firm belief in their unproblematic
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superiority over all that has been. the historian of this type is revealed as
a lackey who serves contemporary fashion and superficial opinion.
Being just when it comes to addressing history involves us overcoming
the prejudice that we are superior. it also requires we reject the view that
the historian is simply a passive mirror reflecting the past. the view that
it is possible for a person to reflect things as they exist in themselves is
mere “mythology, and bad mythology at that” (Untimely Meditations, ii,
6). the past does not snap photographic self-portraits and present them
ready-made to the scholar for regurgitation in a book. When one be-
comes absorbed in something, as any writer does, historical veracity is
seldom at stake. the modern historian is really a kind of dramatist who
tells a story that weaves the heterogeneous threads of the past together
to make a sort of artistic narrative. Any narrative seeks to explain past
events in terms of a unified structure, but the meaning proffered by his-
torical narrative is an illusion: a unity is artificially imposed on the parts.
the “historical virtuoso” is not very different from the great majority of
us in this. We are all driven by a tendency “to think of all things in rela-
tion to all others and weave the isolated event into the whole: always with
the presupposition that if a unity of plan does not already reside in things
it must be implanted into them. thus man spins his web over the past
and subdues it, thus he gives expression to his artistic drive – but not to
his drive towards truth or justice. Objectivity and justice have nothing to
do with one another [Objectivität und Gerechtigkeit haben nichts miteinander
zu thun]” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 6). A history that makes bold general-
izations uttered from the standpoint of an apparently disinterested ob-
jectivity is a history that cannot teach us to be just with regard to the past.
What one learns from history does not come in the form of general max-
ims that are to count as “laws” generated from empirical analysis, as is the
case with the natural sciences. Laws cannot be gleaned from the study of
history. the value of history lies in its ability to transform a taken-for-
granted, everyday theme in the world of historical experience and make
out of it “a comprehensive symbol” that reveals “in the original theme a
whole world of profundity, power and beauty.” history, understood and
practised in this way, is a kind of art of amplification and, like the art of
Greek tragedy, its justice and truth content lies in its redemptive power.
What history requires, Nietzsche therefore claims, is an artist’s objec-
tivity – capable of combining a sense for the just and the true with the
kind of aesthetic sensibility necessary to serve the interests of life. to
engage with the past fruitfully one must be creative rather than merely
critical. A genuinely fruitful interpretation of the past is an extension of
“the vigour of the present,” not the detached and uninvolved “ostentatious
indifference” that uses the word “objectivity” to conceal impotence.
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Practitioners of this kind of sham, Nietzsche contends, ought at least

to be on the level. they ought not to try to seek “the appearance of
justice [Schein der Gerechtigkeit]” by emulating the artistic strength wor-
thy of being called genuine objectivity if they have not been sum-
moned to the terrible “vocation of the just man.” the just person, in
short, is creative. he or she is endowed with the rare ability to trans-
form the past by bringing it back to life in the present. the real histori-
an is one who represents what is “universally known” in a manner never
before encountered: “to sum up, history is written by the experienced
and superior man … When the past speaks it always speaks as an oracle:
only if you are an architect of the future and know the present will you
understand it” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 6). the past speaks in oracular
tones, like the conduit of the will of a Greek god, by communicating
mystery. Only the favoured are granted the oracular right to interpret
this mystery. the genuine historian, the legitimate bearer of this right,
becomes a conduit through which the universal speaks in the unique
idiom of a particular moment from the past. Nietzsche defines the cre-
ative historian by their passion, involvement, and success in communi-
cating this universal knowledge. the creative historical voice does not
seek to condemn what has been in the name of what is. Rather, like the
sternest of judges endowed with an uncompromising will to pursue
justice, it sacrifices the narrow self-interest of the present in favour of a
wider historical truth. the authentically creative historian-judge does
not seek to condemn the past; he or she indicts the present. the value
of knowledge lies in its potential for stimulating the present to re-
examination, in provoking modernity to the realization of its own false
consciousness.
We are at this point uncannily returned to the space articulated by The
Birth of Tragedy, which likewise attempted the creative and recuperative
historical celebration of ancient Greek culture that Nietzsche outlines in
the second Meditation. The Birth of Tragedy revels in its involved attitude to
the ancient past, placing the past at the service of creating a redeemed
German culture, invoking it in an attempt to sting the present into self-
awareness. the final section of the second Meditation returns to the
Apollonian oracle as if to remind us of The Birth of Tragedy. When we look
to the Greeks with a creative eye, Nietzsche claims, we are confronted
not with a stark and distant inferiority but with a shining cultural para-
digm. We encounter an untimely wisdom that relates to the present, for
the Greeks “found themselves faced by a danger similar to that which
faces us: the danger of being overwhelmed by what was past and foreign,
of perishing through ‘history’” (Untimely Meditations, ii, 10). Modern
German culture is replete with the dangerous multiplicity of modernity,
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with its vast array of foreign cultural imports. in the same way, the Greeks
faced the threat of being overwhelmed by the cultural influx of the
Orient. their culture was a “chaos” of what is foreign, “their religion
truly a battle of the gods of the east.” the ancient Greek cure for this was
to counter this dangerous multiplicity by exploiting it, using it to fashion
cultural unity by way of the organizing power of the Delphic oracle.31
the oracular power of mystery, leaning back into a suprahistorically
imagined past to create its own mythology and moral code, facilitated a
pan-hellenic self-creation and self-discovery. We need, Nietzsche argues,
to emulate the Delphic maxim “Know thyself.” Greek culture offers us
the image of culture as an artistic creation worthy of celebration, “cul-
ture as a new and improved physis, without inner and outer, without dis-
simulation and convention, culture as a unanimity of life, thought,
appearance and will.” the universal and profound wisdom of the Greeks
is here held to function as an exemplar for modern life. the organizing
power of the Apollonian oracle created a mythic core for Greek cultural
self-understanding, one in which the place of humanity in the world is
affirmed. here, at the conclusion of the second meditation, is an exam-
ple of history being put to work in the interests of futurity. the creatively
objective and just historian that Nietzsche seeks, the one who shows the
profound truth at work within Greek culture, would be one who relates
its relevance to us in the form of a profound mystery that challenges the
norms that dominate contemporary culture. this is none other than the
Apollonian revelation of Dionysian truth affirmed by The Birth of Tragedy.
Nietzsche’s concern with justice in the early writings is a concern with
the validity of contemporary attitudes and norms. in tragedy, the divine
justice of the Greek world of Dionysian myth reveals the limits of the
socially mediated world of Apollonian convention and law. through it
the conceptions of law and justice necessary to social life are revealed
as forms of contingency easily sundered by the forces of elemental na-
ture. tragic drama communicates this Dionysian condition of elemen-
tal nature in Apollonian terms: it reveals a justice defined by a wisdom
whose authenticity springs from its ability to refract and thereby com-
municate the universal human experience. Grasped in terms of modern
historical consciousness, this justice is held by Nietzsche to illuminate
the path to a rejuvenated, authentic cultural life. such illumination is
essentially oracular. the world of myth speaks to us as a revelation of
31 the oracle at Delphi dates from around the sixth century b c e . Delphi became the
locus of the Ancient Greek world: the “navel of the earth.”
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the transcending possibilities of the Greek paradigm of greatness. its

voice challenges the conformity epitomized by ancient Apollonian self
and modern historically constituted self alike. Dionysian wisdom is ex-
cess. through it the oracular is revealed as a miracle of art and art, in
its turn, is shown to be true metaphysics. As we will see, the develop-
ment of Nietzsche’s thought from this point is marked most essentially
by a break with this conception of metaphysics that culminates in an
attempt to rethink the nature of the oracular in post-metaphysical
terms. this break launches him on the path of historical philosophy
and naturalism that brings with it a radical re-evaluation of what
it means to talk about justice and law, punishment, creativity, and
freedom.
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2
The Unjust Animal, the Law-Like Animal
1. human, All too human initiates Nietzsche’s turn against the metaphysical
ideas of his earlier writings in favour of naturalistic “historical philosophy.”
Where metaphysics seeks to explain reality in terms of timeless, universal ideas,
historical philosophy points to an essential historical contingency underlying all
notions of timelessness. Nietzsche’s historically informed account of thought, with
its blend of history, natural history, and psychology, asserts metaphysics to be a
delusion. Historical philosophy seeks to explain human rationality, truth, logic,
and the virtues in terms of the prehistoric conditions under which they evolved. On
such an account, human identity is not a given but an unconscious achievement
rooted in primeval conditions. These conditions imposed demands upon our an-
cestors, and it is in response to such demands that the rules of thought were forged.
Our current nature is an expression of the legacy of evaluative habits endowed to
us by our autochthonous forbears. Nietzsche concludes that to be human is above
all to be a creature of the passions, i.e. we are embodied beings whose identity is
inextricably entangled with our organic drives.
With the publication of Human, All Too Human in 1878, Nietzsche’s phi-
losophy enters its so-called “middle period” (one that embraces Assorted
Opinions and Maxims, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Daybreak, and the first
four books of The Gay Science). With this Nietzsche turns wholesale against
metaphysical notions he has hitherto endorsed. Where The Birth of
Tragedy cleaves to metaphysics, holding it to be one with art, Human, All
Too Human divorces art from metaphysics.1 Where The Birth turns to
1 in Human, All Too Human, 22, Nietzsche notes that metaphysics is what often bestows
much of art’s significance upon it. under metaphysical presuppositions the artwork comes
to stand as “an image of the eternally persisting” in contrast to the changeable flux that
surrounds it. What, he asks, therefore remains of art in the aftermath of historical philoso-
phy? his answer is that what remains is its legacy. Art has taught us to take pleasure in
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The Unjust Animal, the Law-Like Animal 55
myth as a source of redemption from the travails of modern cultural

sterility, Human, All Too Human rebuffs myth in favour of a demytholo-
gizing spirit associated with the enlightenment.2 Where the second of
the Untimely Meditations seeks to explore the dangers that history, the
“science of universal becoming,”3 poses to culture, Human, All Too
Human points to history as providing the paradigm for philosophical
and cultural enquiry. the profound oracular divination of the past that
the second meditation invokes when it attempts to counter the “bad my-
thology” of modern historical attitudes with the empowering metaphysi-
cal insight of ancient Greek wisdom is abandoned. Metaphysics, Nietzsche
now tells us in Human, All Too Human, is pure delusion, even as art. the
metaphysician clings to the illusory belief that eternal truths exist “as a
sure measure of things,” standing out in their invariance from the flux
of a world that unceasingly changes (Human, All Too Human, 2). truth,
in other words, is conceived by the metaphysician in terms of a reality
that remains eternally stable and self-identical. Against this, Human,
All Too Human extols the virtues of “historical philosophy,” an approach
to knowledge that holds “everything” to have become (Human, All Too
Human, 3).4 On Nietzsche’s new view, the illusions of “eternal facts” and
timeless truths are better read as evidence of an unconscious human
egoism whose vanity would like to see its self-image painted on the world
in immutable shades. such vain mythology needs to be replaced by new
and “unpretentious” truths that offer concrete insight into the particu-
larities of life.
Metaphysics, Nietzsche argues, seeks to explain reality in terms of the
unchanging universality it attributes to specific concepts (truth, reason,
existence and to consider life to be both a piece of nature and always evolving, yet to do so
“without being too violently involved in it.” Art, in other words, has taught us how to dis-
tance ourselves from the world and in this way is a constitutive and abiding element of
knowledge: “this teaching has been absorbed into us, and it now re-emerges as an almighty
requirement of knowledge. One could give up art, but one would not thereby relinquish
the capacity one has learned from it: just as one has given up religion but not the enhance-
ment of feeling and exaltations one has acquired from it. As the plastic arts and music are
the measure of the wealth of feelings we have actually gained and obtained through reli-
gion, so if art disappeared the intensity and multifariousness of the joy in life it has im-
planted would still continue to demand satisfaction. The scientific man is the further evolution
of the artistic” [emphasis added]. thus, scholarship gains its legacy from the aesthetic.
2 the first edition of Human, All Too Human was dedicated to Voltaire.
3 Untimely Meditations, ii, 4.
4 Human, All Too Human, as Müller-Lauter notes, “takes seriously the thesis that … ‘the
whole of philosophy is henceforth forfeit to history’ … he now no longer wants to close
his eyes to its knowledge, as had happened in the second Untimely Meditation” (Friedrich
Nietzsche, 31–2).
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logic, thought, and selfhood). the problem with this view is that the re-
ality that any concept articulates is historically contingent and therefore
limited. concepts are, by their very nature, not universal but time-bound
entities that testify to the conditions under which they arose. By the
same token, every metaphysician is a creature of his or her era and can-
not escape it. in spite of its pretensions to universality, metaphysics is
in fact stubbornly earth-bound. the metaphysical philosopher “sees ‘in-
stincts’ in man as he now is and assumes these belong to the unalterable
facts of mankind and … provide a key to the understanding of the world
in general” (Human, All Too Human, 2). this is no more than a delusion
rooted in a conceptual fetishism that stubbornly refuses to consider the
possibility that the features they denote are not fixed, but are rather
historically generated constructions that have come to be and continue
to become. Now, for Nietzsche, the metaphysician’s speculative and un-
critical manner is mere mythology. even the greatest metaphysician
merely articulates unconsciously the falsifying tendencies at work in
thought. these tendencies, Human, All Too Human seeks to show, consti-
tute the basis of what generally counts as meaningful in the human
world. We need, as a curative to this, to pay heed to the lessons of a new
kind of history – the unconscious history of human presuppositions.
When we look at the past we discover that making “false conclusions was
in earlier ages the rule: and the mythologies of all nations, their magic
and their superstition, their religious cults, their law are inexhaustible
sources of proof of this proposition” (Human, All Too Human, 271). the
metaphysician’s historical ignorance condemns them. however fondly
they may think otherwise, the metaphysician cannot elude the bad con-
ceptual habits that characterize this inherited web of primitive belief;
instead, he or she unconsciously elaborates the pattern of its weaving.
Nietzsche’s notion of “historical philosophy” is a fusion of historical,
cultural, psychological, and natural-historical elements. this is a think-
ing that naturalizes. in other words, Nietzsche’s new starting point is the
view that humankind has a completely natural explanation – that we
emerged from nature and that everything about us needs to be explained
within this framework. On this conception, human identity is not to be
taken as a given. Who we are is a kind of achievement. this achievement
is for Nietzsche largely an unconscious and primeval one rooted in vari-
ous kinds of contingency. We are who we are because of two kinds of
contingency: (i) because of the conditions that our primitive, proto-
human ancestors happened to have to deal with in order to survive and
(ii) because of how they happened to end up dealing with the challenges
these conditions posed. Nietzsche claims that primitive humanity re-
sponded to the demands of nature by developing and refining certain
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ways of thinking and doing in order to cope with it. such practices of
thought and action are governed by rules. however, the rules in ques-
tion, he argues, are not immutable. No eternal ordinances lurk behind
the rules of action and thought. Nor are our concepts, and the practices
to which they are conjoined, exact copies of the world or of the sense
experience to which they purportedly relate. the rules of thinking and
doing are, rather, better interpreted as the signs of a developmental
process at work. they are testimony concerning the manner in which a
certain kind of animal coped with its environment and thereby survived
and evolved (Human, All Too Human, 18; cf. The Gay Science, 110).5
evolution here is as much cultural as biological, for human identity is
achieved through the mastering and fashioning of biological drives by
cultural norms.6 Above all, our identity is circumscribed by an inexora-
ble contingency. there is no universal purpose to “man.” No ordinanc-
es, divine or otherwise, inform or dictate the manner in which this
animal has developed or what it might become.
For Nietzsche, to be human is to be a creature that has passed from
the state of nature to the state of culture. culture characterizes us in an
essential way. At the same time, we remain dominated by that most
5 the degree to which such logical beliefs have their roots in the most primitive condi-
tions ought not, Nietzsche claims, to be underestimated. thus, logic may well begin with
belief, since beliefs are those things in virtue of which judgements are possible about any
situation. One’s explanation of the possible origins of such beliefs and therefore of logic,
however, may go back far further than the metaphysician who believes in their unquestion-
able status might presuppose. the “primary condition” of all organic entities in relation to
their environment concerns the pleasure or pain they encounter by way of it. Primitive
beliefs spring from the stimulus of painful and pleasurable sensations in the form of a third
sensation that results from the “two preceding single sensations.” in between such states of
sensation and response, organisms live in a kind of state of non-sensory indifference. in
such a state, the world is “devoid of interest” and taken to be likewise unchanging. it is this
crude state of a primitive organism’s self-identical orientation toward its environment
(which Nietzsche says even plants dwell in) that forms the basis for more complex beliefs.
“it is from the period of the lower organisms that man has inherited the belief that there
are identical things … it may even be that the original belief of everything organic was from
the very beginning that all the rest of the world is one and unmoving” (Human, All Too
Human, 18). thus, the logical notion of identity has its roots in a primitive, reactive ten-
dency, not in any timeless reality set apart from the domain of sensations. One should note
from this that having beliefs, as Nietzsche conceives of them here, need not involve enter-
taining concepts in the sense that conscious thinking beings like us consider ourselves to
entertain concepts. A belief is, rather, a matter of an organism’s concrete orientation and
response to its environment: it concerns how it responds to a stimulus or the lack of a
stimulus rather than holding true in any abstract, cognitive sense.
6 For an excellent discussion of this and other aspects of Nietzsche’s naturalism in rela-
tion to Darwin see Richardson, Nietzsche’s New Darwinism.
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essential feature of all organic life, the drives.7 We are, in short, creatures
of the passions. We have a primitive, passionate ancestry and our inheri-
tance of this is inescapable. Our ancestry erupts continually into the
fabric of supposedly “civilized” daily life: “We still draw the conclusions
of judgments we consider false, of teachings in which we no longer be-
lieve – our feelings make us do it” (Daybreak, 99). As this passage suggests
and Nietzsche confirms, feelings – not thoughts or concepts – constitute
the legacy of this primitive inheritance: “thoughts are not hereditary,
only feelings” (Daybreak, 30). Nietzsche’s penchant from the outset of
Human, All Too Human for making great play of the fact that things origi-
nate in their “opposites” springs from his repeated emphasis on this
legacy of feelings. Feelings are not “logical,” they know nothing of op-
posites, but the power they possess over us has given rise to the appear-
ance of opposing and incompatible notions in the realm of language,
thought, and concept. thus, for example, the concept of reason pres-
ents itself to us as separate and different in kind from unreason, as a
concept whose identification with the supposed purity of thought can-
not be sullied by anything remotely “unreasonable” or embodied. the
reality, Nietzsche argues, is very different. the concept of reason is a
development of a primitive conceptual apparatus whose distant roots
extend into feelings, not pure, self-identical concepts. Reason is hence
no less a matter of the passions than our so-called irrational sensibilities.
historical philosophy thus seek to relate the emergence and transforma-
tion of diverse elements of feelings into radically different and even op-
posing forms (Human, All Too Human, 31). We must therefore accept the
central role that unreason plays in life: the illogical is rooted in us so
firmly – in the structure of our passions, in our language, our reasoning,
our religious beliefs – indeed, “in everything that lends value to life” –
that it would be impossible to excise it out of human existence without
mortal consequences. As Nietzsche will later put it, “an attack on the
roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life” (Twilight of the Idols,
“Morality as Anti-Nature,” 1). this insight obliges us to note the extent
7 Müller-Lauter notes in connection with this the influence on Nietzsche’s thinking of

Wilhelm Roux, “the founder of evolutionary mechanics” (Friedrich Nietzsche, 163). Nietzsche
acquainted himself with Roux’s work, Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus. Ein Beitrag zur
Vervollständigung der mechanischen Zweckmäßigkeitslehre [The Struggle of the Parts in the Organism.
A Contribution to Complement the Mechanical Theory of Purposefulness] soon after it was pub-
lished in 1881. Nietzsche’s view that the body is a hierarchy of functions locked together in
mutual struggle (e.g. Daybreak, 119) is clearly in sympathy with the ideas he would have
subsequently found in Roux. that said, Nietzsche nevertheless goes well beyond the mech-
anistic conception (see in connection the discussion offered by Müller-Lauter on 179ff).
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to which illogic is an essential ingredient for healthy life: “even the most
rational man from time to time needs to recover nature, that is to say
his illogical original relationship with all things” in order to carry on living
(Human, All Too Human, 31). human life, in other words, rests upon an
irrational condition from which it cannot escape. Pure thought can nev-
er save us, for we are constituted in such a manner that we must, at some
time or another, embrace our “original” passionate nature.
2. Our concepts are not pictures or representations of the world but instrumental
mechanisms that answer to the demands of life. Because of this, there is no neutral
“representation” of reality available to us. All concepts are always already eval-
uations. In consequence, all judgements are, strictly speaking, acts of injustice
against the world because they are selectively evaluative. Being human means,
amongst other things, being aware of the epistemic injustice that one’s own habits
of judgement inexorably commit one to. Nietzsche’s conception of epistemic injus-
tice does not, however, invoke a noumenal realm of things-in-themselves against
which the violence of thought discharges itself; such violence is rather something
perpetrated against the multiplicity of life that each of us is aware of since each of
us embodies it. We are, it follows, bundles of contradictions.
From the outset, Human, All Too Human urges a radical reassessment of
what it means to be human and of that most cherished of human attri-
butes, rational thought. human conceptual habits (of which the use of
reason is but one) emerged as practical coping mechanisms. they were
not designed to reflect the world as it really is, but emerged as practical
responses to the need to coordinate action in relation to environment in
order to survive. such coordination requires judgement, but the judge-
ment in question is of a sort that involves vague approximation rather
than meticulous and accurate reflection. Judgement depends upon pre-
suppositions, and presuppositions are evaluations prompted by feel-
ings. Nietzsche thereby deliberately blurs together questions about
what we know and what we value. he thus collapses the distinction be-
tween supposedly cognitively pondered facts and felt values. the evalu-
ative feeling, he contends, is a feature of all acts of thought. even to
posit the existence of “things” is to have already engaged in evaluating
one’s environment by presupposing it to consist of entities that have
determinate properties amenable to being subordinated to one’s con-
cepts. to live, on this account, is to act in some way; and acting in any way
at all means evaluating according to criteria that have no basis in an ulti-
mate and rational order of things. such criteria relate only to needs (that
is, the needs one has in virtue of being a member of one’s species). the
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consequence of this is that we are inheritors of presuppositions and all

guilty of committing a kind of violent injustice as soon as we think and
thereby judge. Lack of justice typifies us: “All judgements as to the value
of life have evolved illogically and are therefore unjust [ungerecht]”
(Human, All Too Human, 32). Our crude, partial, and premature assess-
ments distort and falsify what they seek to grasp in the very act of reach-
ing out to the world. the notion of epistemic injustice that Nietzsche
outlines in the earlier meditation on history is in this way extended into
a domain that history itself constitutes inescapably: the domain of hu-
man identity. We are creatures compelled into adopting evaluative atti-
tudes by our primitive emotional-conceptual inheritance. this means
that when we evaluate we do so in a manner that commits violence, for
our inheritance is concerned with our animal needs, not with doing jus-
tice to what we encounter.
One needs to grasp the precise nature of the violence of this epistemic
injustice as Nietzsche conceives it. the injustice we perform is not one
that involves an act of injury to some hidden, noumenal realm lurking
behind what we experience. it cannot be denied, Nietzsche notes, that
such a world could be there (Human, All Too Human, 9). however, a nou-
menal realm of this kind would be valueless and without meaning to us,
since what characterizes us most decisively is our engaged, embodied
nature. As soon as one exposes the passions that give metaphysical be-
liefs their peculiar appeal (i.e. the feelings of the estimable, frightful,
and delightful) such beliefs become worthless. hence even if the
noumenon could be grasped, it would, at best, “be a thing with negative
qualities,”8 and consequently knowledge of it would be the most useless
one could possibly have, for nothing could be inferred from it. the epis-
temic injustice that clouds human thought, therefore, does not concern
how things “really are” independently of our ability to experience them.
Nietzsche would not claim such injustice if he thought it did, for it would
make no sense to do so. Rather, the injustice considered here concerns
the fact that all experience occurs within a world of becoming (Human,
All Too Human, 2), and a world that becomes is one of multiple surfaces
whose diversity cannot be exhausted by any single feeling or by concepts
articulated into a standpoint on the basis of that feeling.
All things, Nietzsche comments at the beginning of Daybreak, can de-
mand that we do “justice [Gerechtigkeit]” to them (Daybreak, 4). such a
comment concerns a world that is never wholly out of our reach in the
sense in which a noumenal world of things-in-themselves would have to
8 in other words, it is akin to Kant’s conception of it in the Critique of Pure Reason.
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be. What is multiple can always be felt differently and because of this
can be considered from another standpoint that reveals an initial per-
spective’s partiality and injustice. indeed, we ourselves exemplify this
multiplicity. to be human, Nietzsche notes, means to be able to see dif-
ferently. No one person ever encapsulates merely one perspective. We
are each of us a plurality of feelings and, therefore, standpoints on the
world. this is why we are able to note the contingent status of our judge-
mental habits even as we cannot abandon them: “We are from the very
beginning illogical and thus unjust [ungerechte] beings and can recognize
this: this is one of the greatest and most irresolvable discords of exis-
tence” (Human, All Too Human, 32). to be human, in other words, is to
be prey to the vicissitudes of concepts that, in spite of their apparent
clarity and exactness, are vague and generalizing, and yet at the same
time to sense this violence even as one commits it. We encounter the
injustice of our various evaluative dispositions because they exist in a
state of tension, because they, and consequently we, are always more
than one inclination. conceptual thought, as an articulation of feelings
and therefore valuations, seeks to reduce non-conceptual multiplicities
down to a conceptual specificity that they do not pertain to as a matter
of experience – including our experience of ourselves. this is its injus-
tice. thus, when Nietzsche claims that language and logic, for example,
rest “on presuppositions with which nothing in the real world corre-
sponds” (Human, All Too Human, 11), he does not mean that there is a
real world that does not correspond to our logical judgements. What
does not correspond to such judgements is the world of becoming that,
as it is limitless in its unfolding of different planes, cannot be said strictly
to “correspond” with anything thinkable at all. Fortunately, Nietzsche
adds, it is far too late in the history of the development of human ratio-
nality for such errors to be corrected, for without them we would not be
able to think at all. Our illogical nature thus reveals itself to us at the
cost of our being its living contradiction. We think in terms of identity,
but since we can think otherwise and invoke other identities, we become
aware of our own partiality.
3. The scepticism historical philosophy generates extends to the domain of our

moral preconceptions: existence threatens the loss of value and absurdity. Nietzsche
proffers the image of cultivating a knowing rather than a moral humanity as a
remedy to this threat. The therapeutic practice of historical-psychological observa-
tion provides a paradigm case of this form of knowledge. Here is a form of enquiry
that is free from metaphysics and capable of resisting nihilistic thought. Here, also,
is the path of enquiry that leads into a re-evaluation of the concept of human na-
ture. Such a re-evaluation turns on a critical analysis of the concept of law and
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the related spheres of custom and tradition. These spheres, for Nietzsche, are articu-
lations of our measuring, exchanging, and esteeming nature.
Nietzsche realizes soon enough that the trajectory of thought he has

embarked upon threatens a loss of faith in the value of humanity itself.
if all our most deeply ingrained conceptual habits rest on feelings and
error, it follows that “every belief in the value and dignity of life [like-
wise] rests on false thinking” (Human, All Too Human, 33). if the source
of our sense of justice, human dignity, and worth is epistemic injustice,
its exposure as error compromises what we have become accustomed to
value most deeply about ourselves. humanity, stripped of the pomp of its
conceptual surety, comes increasingly to look like a sophisticated but
ultimately deluded and grotesque beast. the average person, Nietzsche
comments, takes the world to be an extension of his or her own ego.
People “believe in the value of existence,” but only because they are for
the most part unable (or in rarer cases disinclined) to step outside their
own standpoint. Our kind is as a rule a passive and unreflective mass of
socialized creatures ignorantly taking for granted the inheritance of an
illusory and ready-made domain of value-feelings and crassly celebrating
this ready-made world as if human dignity was unproblematically be-
stowed by way of it. the insight of historical philosophy into human ex-
istence thereby offers a first glimpse of the revelation of an appalling and
inconclusive arbitrariness. the past is a necessary and constitutive fea-
ture of human life, but its contingency wreaks havoc upon the being it
has fashioned. We cannot step outside of history, for it has made us and
continues to exert the force of ancient inheritance upon us.
the problem is that living with the above revelation does not mean
merely being sceptical about what we know. it initiates scepticism about
what we value. the defining, tragic-absurd insight of Human, All Too
Human is that there are no necessary “oughts,” only contingent “musts.”
We must think, but we do so in partial ways, for the necessity concerning
how we must think goes no deeper than the demand that, being the sort
of creatures we are, we must be what we are. these narrow perspectives
contain no more moral veracity than they do objective knowledge about
the world of things. thus, Nietzsche notes, “morality, insofar as it was an
‘ought,’ has just been annihilated by our mode of thinking, as has reli-
gion” (Human, All Too Human, 34). the conventional understanding
and valuing of morality has ceased to compel. if it turns out that hu-
manity’s “inclination and aversion and … very unjust assessments [sehr
ungerechten Messungen] are … the essential determinants of pleasure and
pain” then the cost of this insight is profound disillusionment. All
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human life will be revealed as being immured so “deeply in untruth;

[that] the individual cannot draw it up out of this well without thereby
growing profoundly disillusioned about his own past.” scepticism might
be the only option, were genuine scepticism really possible: maybe “one
ought not to judge at all; if only it were possible to live without evaluat-
ing, without having aversions and partialities!” (Human, All Too Human,
32) can the sense for truth, for doing justice to what one encounters in
experience, a sense which itself has sprung from contingency and error,
be fruitfully brought to bear in such a context? Or is it the case that all
that remains possible is a last gasp, “a philosophy of destruction” (Human,
All Too Human, 34) for which there remains only the dubious pleasure of
smashing up the hollow idols that used to count as worthy truths and
moral guides?
Human, All Too Human does in fact offer a tentative and pragmatic
answer to this painful question. inevitably, our most ambitious flights
of fancy in the realm of metaphysical and moral thought are going to
plunge back to earth with a bump. We simply have to cope with this
trauma. Our best bet is to be as sceptical as we can (Human, All Too
Human, 21), but we can become so with a certain degree of comfort. We
can treat our “all too human” aspirations as if they were ailments in need
of medication. “Psychological observation” (Human, All Too Human, 35)
is the medication Nietzsche prescribes for our disease. We cannot hope
to overcome entirely the ills that beset thought and judgement, but we
can learn to cope with our inabilities by gaining insight from them. What
looks like it might be a limitation can, it turns out, be an invitation.
Psychological reflection is therapeutic. it is a means of coping with trau-
ma, for it allows one to pick experiences from the most thorn-ridden and
unpleasant passages of one’s life and mould pithy, redemptive aphoristic
insights out of them. it is also resistant to the threat posed by the strain
of metaphysical sickness to which we are prone, for an explanation of the
motivations for beliefs “which is free of mythology” is, Nietzsche points
out, “a purely psychological explanation” (Human, All Too Human, 132).
in other words, the route away from metaphysics that avoids nihilism
requires a historical philosophy that is psychological.9 the illusory uni-
versal panacea of metaphysics must be replaced by salves and ointments,
by more modest treatments designed to treat specific ailments so that
one can get by on a day-to-day basis.
9 One should note here that psychology in this sense is essentially political psychology
in so far as “the overcoming of modern (european) nihilism is … primarily a political
predicament” (Mellamphy, The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche, 76).
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the psychological enquiry that Nietzsche envisages is not a new

invention,10 nor is it a mere passive mirroring of the hard sciences.11
What characterizes Nietzsche’s psychology most starkly, as one might
guess from what has already been said, is its stance with regard to moral-
ity. if one is serious about the pursuit of knowledge, Nietzsche argues,
one needs to construct a “genuine psychology,” that is, a psychology of
the sort resistant to our most deeply held moral preconceptions, one
that bespeaks “unbelief in the metaphysical significance of morality”
(Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 33). it is on the basis of this contention
that Nietzsche’s post-metaphysical thought begins to address the ques-
tion of the significance of law. Nietzsche develops an account of law that
turns on the contention that one must make sense of it by looking at it
in natural-historical and psychological terms. Any consideration of law
necessitates looking back beyond the sphere of theoretically defined
modern-day discourse concerning the nature of legality to the primitive,
prehistoric conditions that underpin law’s emergence. the illumination
of law thus requires one to consider the related spheres of morality, re-
ligion, custom, and tradition, for these are on Nietzsche’s account inex-
tricably entwined with one another. Nietzsche approaches these spheres
by emphasizing one of the most striking primeval characteristics of
humanity, one that fashioned it, and consequently us, decisively: its
esteeming nature.
4. Humans are measuring animals. Practices linked to this constitute our esteem-
ing nature. Our ancestors were from the outset doers rather than thinkers. We are
creatures of custom and the drives and, as such, are best characterized in terms of
embodiment. Morality is an extrapolation of this embodied nature. Nietzsche’s
10 the works of seventeenth century writer La Rochefoucauld furnish a good example

of the kind of experimentalist hypothesizing Nietzsche has in mind when he talks of psych-
ology. La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) was famous for his Memoirs and Sentences and
Maxims, which Nietzsche read in the early 1870s. Nietzsche’s comments in Daybreak (103)
reveal the extent of his sympathies and the different emphasis of his own approach. Where
La Rochefoucauld regards morality as a mere disguise for ulterior motives, Nietzsche
argues that morality, conventionally understood, is also better understood as metaphysics
– a view that does not preclude the other.
11 Although Nietzsche’s view in this most “positivistic” of his works thus cleaves to sci-
ence as an exemplar of enquiry, it is clear that he by no means considers the methods of
the sciences to be the sole paradigm of the kind of project that Human, All Too Human initi-
ates. Nietzsche’s conception of science (or better perhaps, of scholarly enquiry) is one
that embraces it in a spirit of “gaya scienza,” i.e. as a joyful pursuit (which means engaged,
involved, and committed) rather than as a value-objective one. his later, more acid com-
ments about the sciences (see, for example, Beyond Good and Evil, 14, 22, 211) ought not,
it follows, to come as a shock.
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account begins with habits, which are the source of the power of custom. Habits are
thoughtless, species-defining forms of unthinking action. The latter are taken up
and fashioned by communal forces; they thereby become customs. Custom is hence
the fashioning of drives into second nature. Customs are characterized by Nietzsche
in terms of primeval measuring propensities. The adherence to custom marks out
the emergence of humanity as a law-like animal.
As i have argued elsewhere,12 for Nietzsche being human does not mean
being the measure of all things. it means being the measurer of all things.
On his view, the ability to measure is not some coincidental feature of
our kind, something that we could choose to have or not. it is, rather,
constitutive of us. We are compulsive evaluators: we are the estimating
and esteeming animal. We live and act on the basis of evaluative feelings.
Our estimating and esteeming existence is a matter of what we do, of the
practices we find ourselves in simply by virtue of being creatures of cul-
ture and of the drives. this condition of embodiment is constitutive of
our identity. We do not exist simply because we think and have reason, as
Descartes held, for our reason is an achievement of embodiment (that is
why reason has a history). On the other hand, nor are we like little, emp-
ty cabinets of consciousness waiting for events to intrude into the passive
space of our minds and create image-concepts like little copies of experi-
ence, as empiricism maintained.13 We carry our historical inheritance of
psychological and cultural-moral feelings with us as a condition of hav-
ing any experiences at all. human life in all its aspects is driven by evalu-
ation: “As soon as we see a new image, we immediately construct it with
the aid of all our previous experiences, depending on the degree of our hon-
esty and justice. All experiences are moral experiences, even in the realm
of sense perception” (The Gay Science, 114). According to such a view,
nothing is simply given to us as a brute experiential “fact.” What counts
as “given” and “factual” always stands as a sign of an evaluation, of a feel-
ing. Facts are a kind of interpretation.14
Our moral propensities are part of the interpretive tangle of measur-
ing cultural practices and propulsive habits and drives that endow us
with identity. indeed, moral evaluation is inseparable from them. it
may even be the case, Nietzsche notes, that “all the morality of mankind
has its origin [Ursprung] in the tremendous inner excitement which
seized on primeval men when they discovered measure and measuring,
scales and weighing (the word ‘Mensch’ [‘human’], indeed, means the
12 see sedgwick, Nietzsche’s Economy.

13 For some discussion of these issues see sedgwick, Descartes to Derrida.
14 this, one should add, does not make them any less real for Nietzsche.
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‘measurer’ [‘den Messenden’], he desired to name himself after his great-

est discovery!)” (The Wanderer and His Shadow, 21). Morality, which is
normally numbered amongst the most significant of human achieve-
ments, springs from our ancestors having stumbled on the notion of
measurement. in an act of unconscious self-baptism they hit upon a
truth about themselves. Given that humanity is foremost an evaluator
and valuator, it is practices of weighing, counting, and the like that
characterize it most powerfully in its evolution from the primeval past.
that our ancestors unconsciously developed such practices and ad-
hered to them had as its unintended consequence a re-fashioning of
their primitive identity. All that has come to be rich with significance in
the human universe, Nietzsche implies in section 21 of The Wanderer
and His Shadow, gained its initial impetus from this first unconscious
embrace of measurement.
An estimator is someone endowed with feelings that drive them to
distinguish between what is more and what is less, what is bigger and
what is smaller, to separate like from unlike, to assert relations of equiv-
alence, etc. Measurement, it follows, is coterminous with exchange, for
through it something always stands to something else in a relation of
value that holds it equal, greater, or smaller. exchange, in turn, forms
the groundwork that enables webs of purposes. One estimates the num-
ber, extent, or weight of things only because something may, and indeed
ultimately must, be yielded in exchange for them. the nomadic plun-
derer no less than the sedentary cultivator of the environment presup-
poses a return in exchange for the investment of their efforts. “Labour,”
which can also be war, is only labour when it is undertaken on the basis
of an exchange for food, shelter, and raiment. exchanging, measuring,
labouring, and the like are hence among the most basic conditions out
of which human life develops. they are incorporated from the outset
into the fabric of social norms from which primitive custom is weaved,
endowing the crudest communal orders with the potential to develop
habitual structures fit to solidify into customs. they give rise to the struc-
tures of authority and command that are called “tradition.”
Nietzsche’s conception starts with habit. habit is a necessary condition
of the primitive social creature’s transformation into an animal of custom
and tradition. the fact that habit is pleasurable to us, Nietzsche notes, is a
sure sign of its social utility (Human, All Too Human, 97). habit is thought-
less presumption. the one who successfully pursues their habits does so in
an untroubled state. consider the confusion that arises when habitual ex-
pectations are frustrated. the car refuses to start or the key snaps in the
lock and one is jolted out of trouble-free thoughtlessness. this confusion
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reveals why habits are powerful: their power resides in their being uncon-
scious conditions of action. they allow for the smooth progress easily con-
fused with spontaneity. their pleasure is the pleasure of ease, the sense of
comfort that accompanies the unproblematic feeling of being at home in
the world. Our significant habits are collective species habits, the unthink-
ing webs of presuppositions that ground the emergence of conceptual
thought in human communities. habit is likewise a source of the power of
customs. the latter transform mere habits by organizing them into struc-
tures of wider social significance. “custom,” Nietzsche comments, “is the
union of the pleasant and the useful” (Human, All Too Human, 97). here
lies the source of its social utility. communities are webs of shared habits
solidified into customs. their strictures compel each individual member
to adopt the same modes of acting, the same rituals of performance. such
strictures stamp the primitive beginnings of identity on those who collec-
tively follow the rule and thereby become observers of customs. customs
cater to communal needs (Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 89) and the prac-
tices of exchanging, weighing, and measuring serve these needs. such
practices have a social utility that indicates they emerge as intrinsic to cus-
toms, which fix in place the raw material of habitual observance making it
amenable to ritualization and finally commanding authority in the form
of tradition. thus, custom, which is none other than the patterning of
measuring habits, of ritual observance and formalized exchange, makes
possible the regulated, law-like realm of communal social life. here lie the
beginnings of culture and civilization. here, along with them, lie the ori-
gins of law and justice.
5. The account of custom intimated in human, All too human is formal-

ized by Nietzsche in Daybreak as “the morality of custom” – the primeval con-
dition under which the human animal was decisively fashioned with regard to
its dominant evaluative propensities and conceptual abilities. The notion of
morality of custom reveals morality itself to be nothing more than the adherence
to what is customary. Such adherence is the precondition of the formation of
human culture, which is characterized by Nietzsche in terms of the power of
the normative authority of law and tradition. One acts on custom without a
thought. Following custom, in other words, is unthinkingly following the law.
What most characterizes adherence to custom is action, the observance of more
or less fixed patterns of ritual. The prehistoric origins of such patterns are neces-
sarily repressed. Their authority springs from the apparently mysterious nature
that this repression endows. The power and authority of primitive law, in other
words, is preserved by the aura of myth. As myth recedes, so does the authority
of law and tradition.
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in Daybreak the insight into the communal preconditions of social life is

given a name. Nietzsche baptises the concatenation of norms that makes
possible the emergence of culture the “morality of custom” (Daybreak, 9).
the morality of custom stretches back in time to the era before historical
documentation was possible, to the “actual and decisive eras of history which
determined the character of mankind” (Daybreak, 18). here is the domain
that is first identified in Human, All Too Human as being the irrational,
illogical sphere out of which were articulated all our most valued abili-
ties. to act according to the dictates of the morality of custom is to ad-
here unthinkingly to traditional modes of behaving and estimating.
Morality, Nietzsche tells us, is in reality nothing more than this; it is sim-
ply “obedience to customs.” if one removes tradition, one thereby de-
letes morality (although not necessarily what it has achieved). it follows
from this that to be “moral” is to be one who cleaves to custom, who obeys
the law, that is, the rules of the community, the commanding authority of
its tradition. civilization, it follows, is a domain of rules. such rules are
customary. that is, they are like the rules one adheres to when playing a
game: they cannot be deduced from reality and they are not objects of
thought when playing the game, yet they function as decisive conditions
without which there is no game. One simply moves the chess piece, calls
“foul,” rolls, bowls, or throws the ball in the manner deemed fit for
the practice. Games are articulations of our propensity for customs, re-
enforcing customary power by supplementing it with celebratory and
festive pleasure, the excitement of competition, feelings of belonging,
and a sense of investment. Without customs, says Nietzsche, there is
no civilization, no culture, and no humanity as we understand it, for all
manifestations of civilization rest on the weighty sentence that declares
“any custom” to be preferable to none at all (Daybreak, 16). to become a
creature of civilization, in other words, requires a leap across a boundary
that, once made, separates a life of mere drives and habits (the realm of
nature) from one of drives and habits organized and shaped by ordi-
nances (the realm of culture). through the formative power of primitive
custom a rudimentary proto-humanity was moulded into the kind of be-
ing that foreshadows what we feel familiar with when we look in a mirror.
Look at prehistoric humanity, says Nietzsche, and you will see yourself,
but as a negative image: in the prehistoric world of custom violence was
the norm, and cruelty, deceitfulness, and irrationality were celebrated.
the realm of the morality of custom is the realm of discipline, the irra-
tional breeding ground of the habits out of which, in turn, our rational
conceptual abilities received their later elaboration.
With the morality of custom comes the invention of social authority,
in the form of tradition. One is obedient to custom because it stretches
25660_Sedgwick.indb 68 2013-09-20 11:36:09

back behind one and reaches forward in front of one. ultimately, long
obedience gives rise to a being that obeys simply because it is command-
ed – that wants to be commanded. Just like the soldier who will not
think to question the orders of his or her superior, the being subject to
tradition obeys because he or she stands in thrall to the commanding
power of tradition. the obedient communal being sees in tradition
something to fear. the authority of tradition is supernatural and mytho-
logical – it is the realm of the gods. As the realm of iron law, Nietzsche
comments, custom and tradition are a tyranny that even now one can
hear echoing down through modern sensibilities. Doubt unsettles. the
feeling of displeasure that accompanies scepticism and relativism
(thinking against the norm) is a symptom of our inheritance of the
prehistoric ancestor’s yoke (Human, All Too Human, 631). this disquiet
comes from the ancient power of the tyranny of custom and tradition,
and reflects the profound role they played in human development. We
have a natural tendency to give way to the power of authority – the con-
victions one is supposed to have exert a powerful influence because they
are the norm, i.e. simply because one is supposed to adhere to them in
order to be oneself.
initially, the tyranny of custom was one that lacked both repressive ty-
rants and innocent victims. in the prehistoric setting custom ruled over
nothing more than the brute conditions of animality from which human
identity was painfully harvested by the long drawn-out self-battering that
customary observance demanded of our proto-human forbears.15 As the
notion of the observance of the morality of custom implies, it is what is
adhered to and acted upon – and not conscious thought – that always
come first for Nietzsche. in matters of legality, morality, and religion, he
tells us in The Wanderer and His Shadow (77) what matters are those
features frequently dismissed because they are the most external and evi-
dent, namely custom, gesture, ceremony, not what is often taken as pri-
mary, not the “inner” meaning that accompanies an act of observance.
this external element alone has the potential for “durability.” Ritual is
enacted. it is a matter of the body and its habituation. the body comes
first and the ritualized pattern of its actions endures even as their “mean-
ing” changes. the body is a habitus: the locus of a bundling together,
harmonization, regulation, and regularization of an individual’s behav-
iour in conformity with generally observed norms of behaviour. to this
relatively stable medium, Nietzsche says, “a new soul is always being add-
ed.” in other words, the meaning of a ritual or custom (which we often
15 For the most detailed account of this, see On the Genealogy of Morality, ii.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 69 2013-09-20 11:36:09

take to be primary) is always amenable to reinterpretation. What stay

consistent are the form of the ritual and the realm of value feelings out
of which ritual emerges, not the meanings one might attach to them.
the morality of custom is habit legislated and sanctified. All subse-
quent meaningfulness rests on an extrapolation of this legislation and
sanctification.
since ritual precedes all possible meaning, the significance of law as
it emerged in tandem with primitive, customary exchanging and mea-
suring humanity is something that can never be taken to concern the
possible meanings attributed to it at any one moment. What most deci-
sively characterizes the origins of law is, rather, the persistence of ritual
and unthinking adherence to norms – the “solid” ritualistic sphere of
doing what is customary because it is customary, the obedience to author-
ity because it is authority. Anyone looking for a rational articulation of the
historical basis for law is likely to be disappointed. the authorization of
power is as tautological as it is contingent. in the prehistoric social or-
der, law does not receive its first formulation in the shape of reasoned
statements about the meaning of questions of right and entitlement,
but as unthinking deed, as thoughtless adherence to interrelated net-
works of customary observance. to be habitual, to estimate and ex-
change, to observe custom and bow down before tradition, to conform:
to feel and to do these things, not to theorize them, is, for Nietzsche,
the first intimation of the human. through observing and adhering to
customs with law-like regularity the primitive individual is endowed with
a sense of identity. Who they are corresponds to a role within the com-
munal body. customs and traditions are thus preconditions of creatures
like us having self-understanding, for it is only in virtue of them that the
individual is slowly endowed with the beginnings of a sense of their
place in the world.
to be “subject to the law” means to act in such-and-such a way, and
thereby, in the long run, to become able to understand oneself in terms
of one’s adherence or lack thereof to the norms of one’s social order.
“Law,” one should note here, is in its origins a matter that revolves
around the dynamic of the “inner” realm of human communal exis-
tence. it concerns, in this regard, almost exclusively the regulation of
relations between individual members of a community – the fact that all
adhere to the law. At the same time, its emergence is also conjoined
with what lies outside the communal body, with a realm not subject to
the dictates of custom. Law has, in this regard, an intimate connection
with the development of religion, for the latter springs from the human
need to master the “external” realm of nature. if we look back to the
era when religion was most powerful, Nietzsche argues, “we discover a
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fundamental conviction which we no longer share” concerning our re-

lationship with nature (Human, All Too Human, 111). Modern humani-
ty, fashioned by Newtonian physics and the spirit of enlightenment, has
a tendency to see nature as an iron realm of rigid causality and law. the
ancient human, in contrast, did not understand nature in terms of “nat-
ural causality,” for the primitive was a being who knew nothing of “natu-
ral laws [Naturgesetzen].” Our ancient religious forbears saw nature as
the opposite of themselves, as lawlessness itself, as a magical flaunting
and overturning of the regular and predictable norms of conduct that
epitomized the communal and socialized human individual: “the
whole of nature is in the conception of [primitive] religious men a sum
of actions by conscious and volitional beings, a tremendous complex of
arbitrariness … [For them] it is we who are more or less secure and cal-
culable; man is the rule, nature is irregularity – this proposition contains
the fundamental belief which dominates rude, religiously productive
primitive cultures” (ibid.). in undeveloped, “raw” cultures (a notion
that for Nietzsche, in a perhaps typically racist nineteenth-century vein,
includes “present-day savages”), law – the structure of norms and cus-
toms that constitute the social fabric – determines subjectivity in a
decisive manner. the individual, as we have noted, is bound to this
powerful institutional structure so closely that he or she is not even
aware of it. Law and tradition have a near mechanistically symbiotic
relationship to the self, motivating the individual’s actions through an
invisible normative force that operates “with the regularity of a pendu-
lum.” the organized religious cult arises because of the conflict be-
tween this ordered, inner social world and the disorderly, external
chaos of nature. Nature is a realm of terrible and unknown powers that
threaten the community, the domain of a freedom unthinkable within
the constraints of an identity governed by the straightjacket of commu-
nal norms; it slices into the human world, Dionysian-style, threatening
to overturn it. the response is to try to control nature, to subjugate “the
domain of freedom” through acts of incantation and ritual that project
the structure of meaning that animates and orders the social realm on
to this unstructured, unruly domain. Primitive humanity confronts na-
ture and seeks to master its chaos by casting spells in its direction.
Religion is in this way revealed in its origins as being little more than an
organized cult devoted to the control of nature, a proto-science that
unwittingly projects normatively generated law-like propensities on to a
rebellious world that can in reality know nothing of ordinances or stat-
utes. the unconscious religious aim is to impose upon nature “a regular-
ity and rule of law [eine Gesetzlichkeit, i.e. a legality] which it does not at first
possess” (ibid.). in this way, the emergence of law precedes distinctions,
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such as we make, between so-called “physical laws” and merely “law-like

behaviour” (social norms). to be law-like means to first encounter and
interpret the natural realm in terms of socially generated dictates that
fashion and regulate primitive selves. “Law,” as Nietzsche understands
it, is not derived from the passive observing of regular nature. it is,
rather, a human articulation, an expression of socially mediated feel-
ings that can also subsequently be directed toward environmental de-
mands and threats with a view to their negation.
the same principle applies to the primitive attitude toward other hu-
man beings, to those who do not conform to what is customary and law-
ful. One seeks to subdue others, too, by way of incantation and sorcery.
Religion, in other words, emerges as the articulation of a primeval de-
sire to control not only the nature that lies beyond the communal body,
but also the nature that erupts through the web of the social veneer
from time to time. the lawless person, the alien and outsider, the one
who observes other laws and does things differently, he or she whose
power is a threat and who for this reason represents a danger to com-
munal security and identity, also provokes the cultic-religious response
of seeking control through ritualistic invocation. thus, the emergence
of religion, Nietzsche argues, is connected with not only the law-like at-
tempt to regulate nature but also other human beings. A weaker tribal
grouping, for example, resorts to wizardry (a proto-priestly form) to
“dictate laws [Gesetze] to the Stronger” so as to secure some kind of con-
trol over it (ibid.). the origins of the holy, of the veneration of law and
tradition, now stand revealed in the interaction between social and en-
vironmental forces. the religious cult has a mundanely un-metaphysical
source in law-like practices. it is like a firmed-up “word text”: its “fluid”
elements, i.e. the meanings and concepts associated with it, are reinter-
preted continually and are consequently unstable in comparison with
the relatively “solid” ritualistic observance of customs (the ritual of in-
cantations) that frames them (The Wanderer and His Shadow, 77). history
undercuts metaphysics.
As the above account implies, religion, law, and morality are not
grounded in any revelation of the supernatural, but in concrete condi-
tions that govern the life and continuance of communal beings governed
by the law of custom and tradition. What matters most in this regard is
the ancient, and because of this venerable, nature of the legal and moral
realms: “to be moral, to act in accordance with custom, to be ethical,
means to practise obedience towards a law or tradition established from
old” (Human, All Too Human, 96). the notion of “evil” gains its meaning
from the same logic: it is simply that which does not accord with custom,
tradition, and law. “Good” likewise derives the selfless connotations that
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have accrued to it in the same manner. Moral value judgements spring

from the observance of social norms (“laws”) that have become endowed
with the mysterious, antiquarian, authoritarian quality of the sacred. the
question as to how a specific tradition arises does not matter here,
Nietzsche adds. All traditions and laws are, initially at least, targeted on
preserving “a community, a people.” if one grasps this essential utility one
has grasped what matters about the origins of our law, religion, and mo-
rality: all are rooted in the need for survival. A necessarily un-historically
inclined humanity has simply allowed awareness of these origins to slip
away, since the greater the distance from the sources of its tradition, the
more these sources are forgotten and venerated. the power of authority
is thus above all an aura. Once the aura is dispersed by historical aware-
ness it is demythologized. the more we demythologize, the more mun-
dane things hitherto endowed with otherworldly significance appear to
be to us, which is why “stone is more stony than it was formerly” (Human,
All Too Human, 218). in other words, the sacred sheen that arises from
veiled origins is obliterated by historical revealing: the religious building
viewed as an historical object is rendered mere dead stone rather than
something inhabited and animated by the aura of the dwelling god, the
sacred ordinance shown to be mere words of desperate incantation.
6. Custom for Nietzsche characterizes our species in an essential way. It is the ori-
gin of culture, which in turn is the constitutive condition of subjectivity and self-
hood. To be human is to be a creature of culture, i.e. a being of drives and norms.
The normative social realm is the source of our law-like nature. It is also the source
of human injustice and error, since the habits of thought cultivated by this realm
are rooted in the demand for survival, not in any requirement for veracity. Yet,
because these errors give rise to faith in truth, the desire for truth takes root in hu-
man identity and can be turned against that identity itself. The realm of law-like
custom thus creates an animal that can, within certain limits, go beyond its con-
fines. We are revealed in the light of this as paradoxical beings: desirers of truth
and justice who are immured in untruth and injustice. Metaphysics may not
be easily avoided, but an ethics of scepticism is possible. Such an ethics seeks to
evaluate human judgement on the basis of the criterion of “life.” For Nietzsche, the
terrain of such judgements includes the conceptual field underpinning our no-
tions of law and justice.
the general propensity our species has toward custom and tradition
defines us in a decisive sense (Daybreak, 19). this propensity gives rise to
culture, the realm of the law-like animal, and with it selfhood. culture,
on Nietzsche’s view, generates subjectivity by harnessing the drives and
situating them in various normative arrangements, the differences of
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arrangement giving rise to different cultural forms and different mani-

festations of subjectivity (i.e. of the kind of selfhood that is valued). the
human being is not therefore in essence a smooth space of calm self-
consciousness surrounding a unified will, but a tide of competing in-
clinations that have been selected, suppressed, cultivated, fashioned,
honed, and regulated and thus unified into something synthetic and
law-like by cultural forces. Being human, it follows, involves being a fre-
quently conflicting and uncomfortable blend of culture and body: one is
a bundle of anti-social drives and regularized behaviour. such regulation
suppresses the multiplicity of environmental conditions that culture
must negotiate in order to survive giving rise to the conceptual illusions
of unity, identity, permanence, and the like. Out of this condition of
compulsion and error the realms of legality, justice, and the state are
forged. We judge on the basis of inherited feelings that have no ground-
ing in an ultimate reality or truth. to judge “is the same thing as to be
unjust” (Human, All Too Human, 39) since human judgement is always
partial and generally uncritical of its instrumental and unconsciously
anthropomorphic presuppositions.16
But, Nietzsche argues, we also want knowledge. We want truth even as
we become aware of our limitations and the questionable origins of the
desire for truth. the consequence of this is that we are creatures mould-
ed and enfolded in paradox: we are beings in error who are desirous of
truth, unjust creatures seeking the justice of honest self-understanding.
this is the case in part as a consequence of the unforeseen ramifications
of the pragmatics of primitive social life (The Gay Science, 110). in the
primitive community some judgements may be deemed “good,” some
“bad,” but there are also those which seem to be neither. in this ambigu-
ous space the first experiments in thinking occurred, the playing with
propositions that appeared to have neither a beneficial nor damaging
consequence. here is the origin of metaphysical speculation and its un-
doing. eventually, Nietzsche suggests, this speculative tendency became
part of us, too, and with this came the need to enquire, to ask questions
about the nature and limits of the conditions constitutive of the social
bond. We are the inheritors of this condition. in us, the need for cus-
tom, stability, and law (the preservers of human social life) comes into
conflict with the desire to question the assumptions upon which they
16 that is why, Nietzsche comments, it is difficult to see any particular thing in the
world impersonally, “i mean to see it as a thing, not as a person” (Assorted Opinions and
Maxims, 26). Our injustice is bound up with our being creatures who are dominated by a
“person-constructing, person-investing drive”: we are anthropomorphists through and
through.
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rest. to find oneself in such a situation exemplifies, for Nietzsche, the

dilemma of being a philosopher, of being one who is driven by habits of
judgement yet capable of bearing witness to their habitual and hence
unjust nature: “two lives, two powers, both in the same human being. A
thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life
preserving errors clash for their first fight, after the impulse for truth has
also proved to be a life-preserving power. compared with the signifi-
cance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: the ulti-
mate question about the conditions of life has been posed here, and
we confront the first attempt to answer this question by experiment. to
what extent can truth endure incorporation? that is the question; that
is the experiment” (The Gay Science, 110). the philosopher is a battle-
ground of a contest between inimical inclinations – an open-ended ex-
periment concerning the possibility of a synthesis of contraries. Nietzsche
thereby ends up asking about the extent to which it is possible for us to
criticize our most deeply held presuppositions, even though such beliefs
constitute a necessary condition of our existence.
it is now clear enough how Nietzsche can answer the question first
posed as the beginning of Human, All Too Human. the “need” for truth
springs from “error” – and it has become an essential feature of human
life. to be human means to be prey to the desire for truth that has devel-
oped contingently out of our customary, law-like propensities. Yet, at
the same time, such a desire for truth is not something that finds its
source in mere utility as customary, metaphysically sanctioned belief
does. Rather, from the utility of the primitive customary inheritance of
beliefs that helped preserve the species arises a need that transcends
them. this is the need to question metaphysics – the need for historical
philosophy. Nietzsche can now ask about the degree to which it is possi-
ble for us to strive for truth and objectivity given that such striving may
mean sacrificing the metaphysical errors upon which our lives rest.
Pursuing “truth,” in this sense, involves becoming a historical philoso-
pher and criticizing metaphysics, recognizing as one does so that one is
inexorably trapped within it. to do so means engaging in a form of sus-
tained criticism of the very conditions of one’s own life. Out of epistemic
injustice, therefore, has emerged the relentless demand that we some-
how do justice to our beliefs and thereby ourselves. As Nietzsche puts it
in the 1887 addition to The Gay Science, the only way to pursue justice in
this sense is through scepticism. in other words, one must refuse to allow
“convictions” any “rights of citizenship [Bürgerrecht]” in the domain of
knowledge (The Gay Science, 344). Nietzsche’s use of the language of law
and invocation of the legal subject is no accident here. the realm of the
law-like that has given rise to us can now be turned against itself in us.
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One does not, Nietzsche adds, thereby escape from metaphysics.

however, a new moral demand concerning the value of truth comes to
take its place in our table of values: the “‘will to truth’ does not mean ‘i
will not allow myself to be deceived’ but – there is no alternative – ‘i will
not deceive, not even myself’; and with that we stand on moral ground”
(ibid.).
this insight provokes the conclusion that human judgements need
to be evaluated according to new criteria inspired by a new conception
of the will to truth. these criteria concern the degree to which judge-
ments are “life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps
even species-breeding” (Beyond Good and Evil, 4). having charted out the
domain of law-like custom that gives rise to us, Nietzsche seeks to go be-
yond it. he wishes to take the sense for truth and justice that we have
unconsciously cultivated and turn it against its own presuppositions and
hence ourselves, with the aim of discovering the degree to which a new
humanity can thereby be given form, one which is capable of taking an
affirmative stance with regard to its being a creature of earth and erring.
it is a matter of taking the perilous path of resisting “customary value-
sentiments” and thereby situating one’s thought in a domain that is “be-
yond good and evil.” this is the domain of naturalism.
Naturalism, as Nietzsche will come to call historical philosophy, means
rethinking not only what it means to be human but what nature too
signifies when it has been divested of metaphysical significance.17
understood ontologically, that is, from the standpoint of becoming af-
firmed at the beginning of Human, All Too Human, law at its outset is
lawless accident, justice is unjust imposition. that we are law-like at all is
something whose origins, like those of our desire for justice and truth,
reside in the contingencies and vicissitudes of history. creatures that
17 there is for Nietzsche no natural order of things that precedes the development of
humanity, guiding its path into becoming the kind of being it now is. Any rigorous rumina-
tion on truth and justice must, it follows, begin with the realization that it starts with error
and injustice. Nature is essentially lawless insofar as it contains no moral teleology. even the
modern scientific notion of the existence of an overarching realm of natural laws (that is,
of an iron rule of lawfulness to which the natural world conforms) is just a more recent
example of our kind’s propensity for ancient mythological feelings. All utterances of faith
(including those of the sciences) in a natural world that behaves in a way corresponding to
our concepts of legitimacy and regularity are words of mere “superstition,” incantations
(Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 9). the notion that a “necessity” of this kind exists in nature
is another form of metaphysical delusion, a last nook of refuge in which the “mythological
dreaming” of speculative and superstitious fantasy takes shelter. “Laws” are better under-
stood as “conventional fictions”: they are useful as markers that can be used with a view to
arriving at understanding, not as denoting something that “really” exists in the world (see
Beyond Good and Evil, 21).
25660_Sedgwick.indb 76 2013-09-20 11:36:09

looked like our dim and distant ancestors might have turned out differ-
ently, or not at all, with the consequence that we might never have been.
No first and privileged principle or concept can be placed at the begin-
ning of the process that leads to our ancestors being seized and trans-
formed by the law-like regularity of social order and custom into creatures
that demand truth and justice in some form or another. Yet we are, for
Nietzsche, creatures seized by the demand for truth and justice. We have
been shaped inexorably by forces that place this demand within us as
a condition of life. it is not, however, at this primitive level alone that
Nietzsche’s naturalistic account is applied most forcefully. Rather,
Nietzsche’s naturalistic paradigm is applied inexorably to his consider-
ation of the institutions, concepts, and dominant understandings of law
and justice. it is to these areas that we must now turn.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 77 2013-09-20 11:36:09

3
Justice Talk, Community, and Power
1. Our nature, for Nietzsche, is the cumulative outcome of the prehistoric master-
ing of drives through practices. Culture is thus a synthesis of the organic and the
normative. It is in this synthesis that the sources of justice lie. Here, too, Nietzsche’s
thoroughgoing naturalism is evidenced. Justice, prudence, indeed, all the Socratic
virtues, he argues, originate in animality and the pragmatic demands of life.
As we have seen, Nietzsche develops a naturalism that holds the prime-

val, normative force of custom and tradition to have shaped the human
animal in a decisive manner. to be human is to be a being of law-like
propensities, i.e. of custom and tradition moulded by a shared realm of
habits and conventions. We are creatures of law, morality, and the sacred
because we are creatures of norms. Nietzsche’s emphasis here is on living
and doing, i.e. on practices. Activity is the decisive feature of valuing, and
valuing means holding true, desiring to know, deeming good and bad,
considering just, fair, and the like. On this account, there is no gap sepa-
rating our epistemic and normative propensities, which means that our
origins and identity are more animal-like than the metaphysician would
ever assume.
Naturalism means emphasizing the animal origins of the human and
re-integrating humanity into the wider world of natural history. every
animal, Nietzsche tells us (Daybreak, 26), needs to escape its predators
and facilitate the capture of its food and does so by adapting itself to
environmental demands: “one wishes to elude one’s pursuers and be fa-
voured in the pursuit of one’s prey.” For this reason, the animals “learn
to master themselves and alter their form, so that many, for example,
adapt their colouring to the colouring of their surroundings … [or] pre-
tend to be dead, or assume the forms and colours of another animal or
of sand, leaves, lichen, fungus.” We are no different. Our concepts, how-
ever transcendent their ambitions may be, are elaborations of practical,
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Justice Talk, Community, and Power 79
animal import rather than of metaphysical significance. Nietzsche here

naturalizes the germinal aspect of “the sense for truth.” the desire for
truth is not an exclusively human possession. Like us, no animal benefits
practically from being deceived by what it confronts, or by deluding it-
self, or by responding precipitately to the prompting of its passions.
every animal wants “truth,” in this limited and practical sense, no less
than we are inclined toward it in a more extravagant, all-too-human
sense. Provoked by environmental demands, the non-human animal,
too, becomes aware of the effects that its presence has on other beings.
it thereby “learns to look back upon itself, to take itself ‘objectively.’”
here, albeit in brute form, Nietzsche locates the roots not only of the
desire for truth but of our other virtues, too: “the animal assesses the
movements of its friends and foes, it learns their peculiarities by heart, it
prepares itself for them: it renounces war once and for all against indi-
viduals of a certain species and can likewise divine from the way they
approach that certain kinds of animals have peaceful and conciliatory
intentions. the beginnings of justice [Die Anfänge der Gerechtigkeit], as of
prudence, moderation and bravery – in short all that we designate as the
Socratic virtues, are animal: a consequence of that drive which teaches us
to seek food and elude enemies” (Daybreak, 26). characteristics that we
have come to esteem (being just, resisting temptation, courage) are pre-
sented here as the result of a drive directed instrumentally toward prac-
tical demands. Virtue is thereby naturalized, the appeal of metaphysics
as a means of explaining it denuded. What we think of as a matter of
high principle that sets us apart from the rest of what lives is in fact the
product of pragmatic considerations as common in humanity as in dogs.
Nietzsche’s conjoining of culture and nature exposes the supposedly
autonomous socratic virtues as complex refinements of the drive to sur-
vive. What “nourishes” – in the refined sense that exemplifies the world
of culture – is not mere nutrition, however, but the self-understanding
that accompanies a life of cultivation. What is dangerous likewise be-
comes, through culture, transformed into one’s understanding of what
is antithetical to one’s cultivation. strictly speaking, Nietzsche concludes,
“it is not improper to describe the entire phenomenon of morality as ani-
mal” – at least in so far as its origins are concerned. Our virtues of justice,
truthfulness, and prudence spring from inclinations no less animalistic
and instrumental than those underlying the invention of hammers.
2. Justice talk emerges as an articulation of our law-like, communal nature.

Justice begins, Nietzsche argues, as a kind of exchange that springs from relations
of power. Power is central to Nietzsche’s theory even in his earliest “middle-period”
writings, as something constitutive of the communal social realm: the human
25660_Sedgwick.indb 79 2013-09-20 11:36:09

community has its origins in the struggle of the weak to preserve themselves against
forces that would overwhelm them individually. The community is a majoritarian
structure. Its founding principle is an equality that is governed by the dominance
of the whole over the individual. It is a realm in which the norm is enforced relent-
lessly with regard to all its members in order to achieve a state of equilibrium.
Communal equality, it follows, is an achievement rather than a given condition
derived from natural principles: there is no “natural law,” as liberalism might
assume. Nietzsche offers an illustration of this conception of communities in the
Wanderer and his shadow (22). A community, Nietzsche argues, will respond
to threats posed to it by seeking a state of equilibrium, either in the form of the play-
ing off of parties against one another or by increasing its collective power to match
that of the perceived aggressors. This pursuit of a state of equilibrium characterizes
the communal creation of justice. It likewise reveals why there is no such thing as
“natural justice.”
the crude beginnings of justice, as we have seen, reside for Nietzsche in

the extrapolation of pragmatic demands common to the animal and hu-
man worlds. he interprets the origin of justice in its specifically social
and political forms as coming out of a subsequent re-elaboration of the
logic of these demands by law-like, normative beings (i.e. creatures rath-
er like us) endowed with language and culture:
Origin [Ursprung] of justice … Justice (fairness) [Gerechtigkeit

(Billigkeit)] originates between parties of approximately equal power
… where there is no clearly recognizable superiority of force and
a contest would result in mutual injury producing no decisive out-
come the idea arises of coming to a mutual understanding and
negotiation over one another’s demands: the characteristic of
exchange is the original characteristic of justice [der Charakter des
Tausches ist der anfängliche Charakter der Gerechtigkeit]. each satisfies
the other, inasmuch as each acquires what he values more than
the other does. One gives to the other what he wants to have, to
be henceforth his own, and in return receives what one oneself
desires. Justice is thus requital and exchange under the presuppo-
sition of an approximately equal power position: revenge therefore
belongs originally within the domain of justice, it is an exchange.
Gratitude likewise. (Human, All Too Human, 92)
Justice emerges from out of the play of exchanging practices. Questions

concerning giving and receiving, the calculation of costs and benefits
– in short, forms of negotiation – must all enter into play when one
contemplates the nature of being just. Most especially, as this passage
25660_Sedgwick.indb 80 2013-09-20 11:36:09

makes plain, power is central to Nietzsche’s view. the notion of some-

thing counting as having the same value as something else, the logic of
substituting one thing for another in a symbolic relation of equivalence
that is deemed “just,” is coterminous with the manifestation of power.
Justice and power are thereby inextricably entwined. exchangers who
meet in the domain of culture as opposing parties with conflicting inter-
ests encounter one another locked together in a power relation that de-
mands resolution – and the only resolution where neither party can
overcome the other will, by necessity, be a “just” one.1
Nietzsche comes only later to develop a full-blown philosophy of will
to power, but it is notable that even in Human, All Too Human power pat-
terns his understanding of the social realm in a decisive way. Justice, on
this conception, flows from relations of power – more specifically from
the notion of an equality of power between two mighty forces. Justice,
one should note, is above all characterized as “justice talk.” it is negotia-
tion, an engagement between law-like disputants with initially heteroge-
neous interests and purposes situated within a common sphere (the
realm of exchange and culture). each side finds itself forced into discus-
sion and compromise by its own lack of a decisive advantage. Power, it
follows, defines and shapes social relationships in such a way as to be an
essential precondition of the emergence of justice. One should add that
even here in the book that announces Nietzsche’s first embracing of
psychology, power is not relegated to the status of a mere psychological
trait of the individual (i.e. a second-order feature). Rather, power is con-
stitutive of relations between selves, of the conditions in virtue of which
beings capable of meeting as disputants exist at all.
Power is in the first instance the power of shared custom and tradition
over the body and it is this that gives rise to the possibility of any disputa-
tion between powerful camps arising. it follows that power is normative
in its essential aspect.2 Power is internal to communities; power radiates
out from communities; and power radiates through the elements out of
which they are constituted, coalescing around their formation and creat-
ing the conditions for designating what is designated as “outside” them
(what is deemed “other”) just as much as what falls “within” them (indi-
viduated subjects). the reason for this resides in the conditions under
which communities originated and in the fact that these conditions
abide so long as communities exist. in their beginnings, Nietzsche tells
1 Presumably, parties can also fail to reach such a just resolution. in such a case, con-
flict becomes interminable and is characterized by the strife and waste that epitomizes
ceaseless feuding.
2 see sedgwick, “Nietzsche, Normativity and Will to Power.”
25660_Sedgwick.indb 81 2013-09-20 11:36:09

us (The Wanderer and His Shadow, 22) communities came about as struc-
tures that enabled the “weak” to organize themselves in such a way as to
counter any powers that threatened them. they emerged, in other
words, as a means of exerting a counter-form of power. Just as our distant
ancestors’ lack of sharp teeth and claws drove them to this collective so-
lution to the problems posed by creatures endowed with very sharp teeth
and claws, so more sophisticated proto-human and human social forma-
tions answer the same basic need. communities exist because they satisfy
the vulnerable, ever-threatened individual’s need for safety (The Wanderer
and His Shadow, 31).3 As befits any organization of the weak, communi-
ties are majoritarian structures. they are established “on the basis of
[their members] positing themselves as being equal to one another.” the
condition of equality is therefore the founding condition of communal
relationships, but such equality is a kind of imposition.4 in terms subse-
quently expressed in On the Genealogy of Morality (ii, 1–2), the community
is the site of regulation, the place where the norm is established (by un-
relenting force if necessary). should a community collapse into anarchy,
Nietzsche adds, it ought to come as no surprise that there will straight-
away erupt “that condition of unreflecting, ruthless inequality that con-
stitutes the state of nature … there exists neither a natural right nor a
natural wrong [Es gibt weder ein Naturrecht, noch ein Naturunrecht]” (The
Wanderer and His Shadow, 31). communal equality is not a given, natural
condition. its authority does not reside in the universality of a timeless
natural law but in the dynamic of the socially constituted realm from
which it springs. equality is posited as a precondition of a certain form of
life (a shared life) being possible.
the discussion offered in section 22 of The Wanderer and His Shadow
illustrates these points. Nietzsche envisages a situation in which a robber
and powerful individual are both in a position to benefit from what they
can get out of a weaker, communal group. the difference between bar-
on and robber, Nietzsche notes with typical irony, resides not in their
respective moral status, but only in the different ways they seek to obtain
their incomes. the person of power can get what they want in tribute
from the local community by promising to defend it from incursions
3 the word “individual” here does not necessarily designate a fully self-conscious sub-
ject endowed with all the faculties we conceive of now when we use the term “human.” As
has already been said, an individual can be just one organism, a member of a species.
“individual” in this sense does not denote individuality, which is for Nietzsche an achieve-
ment of culture.
4 Nietzsche adds in The Wanderer and His Shadow, 31, that the individual does not nec-
essarily sit happily with the imposition of this communal compromise.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 82 2013-09-20 11:36:09

threatened by the robber. the robber attains their ends through threats
and force. Both are more or less subtle brigands. What is “essential” in
differentiating the two, Nietzsche argues, is the nature of the promise
that the powerful person makes to the community. this promise states
that he or she will enforce a state of “equilibrium with the brigand.” it is
in the space of possibility opened up by this balance of power that the
grouping of the “weaker” detects the possibility of scraping out some
kind of living while avoiding destruction at the hands of two equally
threatening forces. the person of power exists in a relationship with the
population of the locality that depends upon his or her ability to counter
the threat posed by the robber and achieve a state of equality of power
that ensures they will not be overrun and terrorized. For the community,
the powerful individual is a means to the end of resisting the robber; and
it is a means that is preferable to the more dangerous alternative of a
weak community actively resisting both and thereby situating itself pre-
cariously between two aggressive and powerful parties. the community’s
strategy thus “holds two dangerous beings in check: the former through
the latter, the latter through considerations of advantage.” the commu-
nity in this way repeats the logic that governed its primeval originating
conditions. Just as the origins of communities reside in the weak gather-
ing together in a domain of equality to guarantee mutual protection, so
the community operates as a structure of power enabling the weak to
impose by any possible means a state of “equilibrium” on an unequal and
unstable situation.5
5 seyla Benhabib makes the following comment: “For Nietzsche, morality is a sublima-
tion of the life drive of the stronger to dominate the weaker; the origins of morality are
internalized controls imposed upon the strong by the weak such that the weak cannot be
damaged” (Situating the Self, 195). A similar view is expressed by irving zeitlin, who argues
that Nietzsche, following so-called “pre-socratic” thinkers such as callicles (zeitlin calls
them “proto-Nietzscheans”), holds law and morality to be a construction of the weak de-
signed to restrain the strong (see zeitlin, Nietzsche: A Re-Examination). As is clear from the
account offered here, from the outset Nietzsche has more nuanced conceptions of power,
strength, and weakness in mind than the former view accords him. All human beings are,
for Nietzsche, in their origins “weak” animals: our ancestors’ lack of sharp fangs and claws
is what impelled them into communal life. the proto-human community, as an assem-
blage of the vulnerable threatened by overwhelming nature, survived by way of the imposi-
tion of conformity on its individual members. in other words, as the second essay of the
Genealogy argues, those who are subject to strong impulses that threaten the community
are either mastered or spurned by it. the community is thus the original condition of hu-
man life which, at the same time, through various means unconsciously cultivates those
who are subsequently able to turn on it and subjugate it (the “strong” – the tyrants who are
the originators of bad conscience and the state, see chapter 5, section 5). it should be
noted, however, that Nietzsche considers weakness to be productive (it gives rise to
25660_Sedgwick.indb 83 2013-09-20 11:36:10

Needless to say, the demand for equilibrium and security that consti-
tutes an essential condition of communal existence means that any com-
munity will also seek other recourse to overcome existential threats if
possible. this is because the state of subjection to one more powerful “is
the least desirable one for the community, since it must deprive them of
the time they need for the provision of their subsistence with the regular-
ity it requires and be attended by the ever-present threat that they will be
deprived of all the products of their labours. that is why the community
prefers to bring its power of defence and attack up to precisely the point
at which the power possessed by its dangerous neighbour stands and
then give him to understand that the scales are now evenly balanced:
why, in that event, should they not be good friends with one another?
Equilibrium is thus a very important concept for the oldest theory of law
and morality; equilibrium is the basis of justice”6 (The Wanderer and His
Shadow, 22). the very condition of equilibrium that forms the basis of
communal life now forms the condition out of which justice (i.e. a fair
exchange between disputing parties) emerges. When faced with danger,
the community reasons economically (as one might expect of a popula-
tion of workers and exchangers). if possible, it will sacrifice sufficient
expenditure to raise itself up to a situation of power equivalent to that of
the aggressor. however, Nietzsche argues, once the “scales” are balanced,
once the community attains equality of power, what is sought is not un-
productive, pre-emptive violence, nor vengeance for past wrongs suf-
fered, but a just and law-like relationship that replicates the logic of the
community’s constitutive conditions.
What is revealed here, Nietzsche argues, is one of the essential precon-
ditions of the ancient theorization and teaching of law, right, and moral-
ity: the striking of a balance. the epistemic injustice that, we have seen,
Nietzsche holds to lie at the root of primitive human ancestry is thereby
articulated into a domain of fairness. equality of power is taken to supply
the necessary condition for a just calculation of competing interests. the
community applies the logic of equality that constitutes the internal con-
dition under which its members relate to one another to what it encoun-
ters “outside” itself in an attempt to bring them into the power of its own
the intellectualization of humanity, and hence to all that is worthy of celebration in culture
– see Genealogy, i, 7: “the history of mankind would be far too stupid a thing if it had not
the intellect of the powerless injected into it”). Nietzsche’s castigation of the weak (the
herd) and his valorization of the strong (the individual) is therefore a more complex mat-
ter than at first it appears to be.
6 “Gleichgewicht ist also ein sehr wichtiger Begriff für die älteste Rechts- und Morallehre;
Gleichgewicht ist die Basis der Gerechtigkeit.”
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domain. equilibrium (which, amongst other things, is the precondition

of being equal before the law and thus an extrapolation of custom and
tradition) is an achieved condition of communities. it is essential to them,
since their survival turns upon it. Justice, in turn, is possible in virtue of
this state of balance. the reasoning underlying Nietzsche’s consistent
scorn for conceptions of natural justice is revealed here. if justice is a
created thing, a matter of culture, practices, and interests, then any at-
tempt to assert for it an origin within the natural order of things is an act
of violence that distorts its reality. A “justice” that is an extrapolation of
purportedly timeless, natural principles is one that ignores the judge-
ment of historical, naturalistic scrutiny. A timeless justice is not some-
thing to be pondered, it is not something that has been struggled over;
it cannot be questioned since its principles are taken to be always already
given in their totality. Nietzsche’s own justice, as we will see in the follow-
ing two chapters, is prefaced on the contention of the necessity of such
struggling, pondering, and questioning.
3. For the metaphysician, justice involves the application of pre-existing and uni-
versal rules denoting right. In reality, justice is actively constructed: it is an ex-
trapolation of the logic of equilibrium and exchange that characterizes communities.
A pragmatic balance is struck. This balance is always a balance of power that
expresses the regulation of costs and benefits necessary to maintaining social order.
There is, consequently, no “natural justice.” The condition of the “rule of law”
likewise expresses a balance of power. The sources of these normative notions reside
in the fact that communities are domains of power relations that impose equality,
conformity, and regularity.
cruder metaphysical conceptions of justice, Nietzsche notes, grasp nei-

ther the nature of communal equilibrium nor the justice that character-
izes it with sufficient subtlety. they fail to note that it is not found but made.
On a crude conception, being just is taken to signify the conservation
of an existing natural order of things. the principle of equivalence
(“an eye for an eye”) is simplistically presupposed to be something that
merely preserves an already existing condition of justice by imposing a
limit that the fury of the wronged party must not transgress when seek-
ing recompense.7 the crude conception thinks that when one exacts
7 such a view is exemplified by Locke’s liberalism. For Locke, natural right is at work
even in the state of nature. the transgression of natural right legitimates a victim’s desire
for compensation for a wrong suffered. in turn, the victim’s partiality in this regard justifies
the creation of a civil pact and the invention of government as the impartial enforcer of
principles of right. the role of the state is in this way given authority by natural law.
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retribution in the form of “an eye for an eye” this means that the princi-
ple of justice is conserved in the retributive act itself.8 Against this,
Nietzsche claims that retribution does not preserve an already existing
condition of being just, but actively constructs it. the assertion of a vic-
tim’s right to jus talionis (the right to pay back in kind) re-establishes “the
equilibrium of the disturbed power relationship”: it makes just rather than
merely conforming to a pre-existent universal state of justice from which
the act of wrongdoing represents an unfortunate deviation. in other
words, justice presupposes the creative striking of a balance; it is a matter
of achieving an equal relation of power, not the mere conservation of an
already established situation. Justice must be created; and it must be cre-
ated within the productive tensions that characterise power relations.
to the extent to which equilibrium, on Nietzsche’s conception, is not
merely something given, it likewise cannot be taken to denote a naturally
existing state of neutrality that gets disrupted by an illegal incursion
when injustice occurs. equilibrium (the balance of power) must be
striven for and attained. it is for this reason that in the primitive, original
states of early human societies, retaliation in the form of an eye for an
eye was sought – “one eye, one arm more is [considered] one piece of
power more, one weight more in the scales.”9 that is why in all commu-
nities there exist forms of discipline (in the shape of public shaming and
penalties) that serve “as measures against transgressions, that is to say
against disruptions of the principle of equilibrium.” Punishment reflects
this in so far as it usually takes the form of a loss of equality, “the trans-
gressor is reminded that through his act he has excluded himself from the
community and its moral advantages: the community treats him as one
who is not equivalent” (The Wanderer and His Shadow, 33). in this regard,
punishment is never mere repayment: it “contains something more, some-
thing of the harshness of the [unforgiving inequality of the] state of nature; it is
precisely this that it wants to recall” (ibid.). Law, Nietzsche argues here, is
once again best conceived of as an expression of the power of social
forces and relationships. in such a world, costs and benefits as they relate
to the collective social body regulate behaviour.
Justice ensues as the consequence of the human propensity to weigh
and measure – it expresses an understanding of difference and equality.
8 this exemplifies what Gillian Rose calls the “classic definition of justice” (The Broken
Middle, 143). this definition is, in Rose’s words, “purely formal” and holds “that fairness
consists in treating like cases alike. it implies that justice has always meant … the re-
establishing of differences judged to be just.”
9 One could add here that power on this conception is embodiment. the body itself is
power made manifest as an entity situated within a social domain.
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it follows that when one encounters situations in which the rule of law
has been established, the fact of its having been established does not
spring from natural principles of justice, even if it is associated with con-
ditions of equality. the state of equilibrium that the presence of the rule
of law indicates is, rather, the sign of the forming of a social contract as a
consequence of establishing an equality of power relations. the rule of
law is thus a means rather than an end (The Wanderer and His Shadow,
26), since it ultimately rests on contracts between those who are equal.
the rule of law consequently exists for as long as the power of those
who have made the contracts remains “equal or similar.” Pragmatism,
not high principle, rules here: “prudence created law to put an end to
feuding and to useless squandering between forces of similar strength.”
Because of this pragmatic condition, Nietzsche notes, should one party
later attain dominance formal legality is easily overturned, “subjection
enters in, and law ceases.” We may be law-like beings, but each formally
articulated instance of law and justice is at best a temporary condition, a
contingent articulation of law-like propensities.10
We are, then, as a rule, creatures of community and, because of this,
beings subject to the condition of equality. in terms Nietzsche will
come to use increasingly, human beings are sophisticated “herd ani-
mals” (cf. Beyond Good and Evil, 199). sophisticated herd animals are
self-interpreters gripped by the power of norms; they obey the com-
mands of custom, tradition, and law because the commands are what
they are, because that is the norm, because that is how “we” do things
here, and how we do things is sanctioned by the uncanny and frightful
power of the sacred. it is this obedience that serves as the guarantor of
the equilibrium upon which all human forms of communality depend
if they are to endure. here lies the source of the balance of power.
communities are structures permeated by the power of custom, the pow-
er of the sacred and what the sacred sanctions: the power of law. so long
as the community remains relatively stable so does the law that character-
ises it. custom, the sacred, and the law all point to the power of confor-
mity that accompanies this stability: to the power that makes equal and
10 however, the consequence of the negation of law is “the same as that previously
attained through the rule of law” since the dominant party needs to be careful to ensure
that the strength of the subjected should be conserved and not pointlessly wasted.
Nietzsche thus draws a distinction between the historical outcroppings of our primitive,
law-like sensibility and that sensibility itself. the latter is the condition of the rule of law,
but such formal conditions of legality are not themselves given as permanent structures.
their existence depends upon the balance of power within a community, or between dif-
ferent communities, and is historically contingent.
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alike. the more that human psychology has been forged by this power,
the more that human communities in the shape that we come to recog-
nise them – i.e. as realms of shared values and practices populated
by subjects endowed with socio-psychological propensities and abilities
(e.g. promising, entreating, offering) and (not infrequently conflicting)
interests – come into existence. With this we enter the realm in which
the making of justice and rights happens.
4. Justice has the initial characteristic of an exchange because it emerges as the

consequence of the nature of communities and the relations between them. We are
exchangers, and negotiation is second nature to us. The idea of justice as fair-
ness is hence a development of the primitive legal domain of exchange (like for
like). Here lie the origins of personhood; likewise, the ancient view of justice as
vengeance.
As has been noted, on Nietzsche’s interpretation, what comes to be

called “justice” has the initial characteristic of an exchange. it has this
characteristic because it emerges as the consequence of the nature of
communities as modes of organizing the weak and because stalemates
arise between communities of exchangers and estimators. such beings
are creatures imprinted with normative propensities and they cannot
help but unthinkingly bring these propensities to bear upon their
situation. For an exchanger and estimator, negotiation and the giving
of one thing for another is a natural extrapolation of the order of
things wherein purposes can be pursued and wants satisfied accord-
ing to the governing norms that ensure social equilibrium and stabil-
ity. the notion that justice is a matter of fairness, Nietzsche adds
elsewhere, is a further articulation of this (The Wanderer and His
Shadow, 32). Fairness is a more nuanced extrapolation and enhance-
ment of the principle that demands like be treated as like, “a subtler
regard for equilibrium which looks before and behind and whose mot-
to is ‘as thou to me, so i to thee.’ Aequum [equitable] means precisely
‘it is in conformity with our equality’” (ibid.). Fairness, in short, presup-
poses the elaboration of crude, communal conceptual understanding
into a richer web of self-interpretation: it requires each of “us” be count-
ed as one amongst equals. Justice is hence deemed “fair” so long as it
involves the exchange of like for like, so long as each party receives by
way of repayment what it can claim an entitlement to in virtue of the
demand for recognition of its equality, i.e. so long as power is balanced.
Justice, one should therefore note, is from the outset of Human, All Too
Human understood in terms of characteristics that signify a primitive le-
gal realm composed of possession and barter. this is the realm in which,
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Nietzsche argues in the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality (ii, 8),
person encounters person for the first time. Personhood, exchange,
equivalence, equality, and justice thus all emerge together as a battery of
related and defining elements of the human world.
We can also note on the basis of this why vengeance, which often
sounds to modern ears like irrational and unjust cruelty, also belongs
to the most primordial sphere of justice. Revenge, the extorting of the
most violent requital in compensation for a damage by a wronged par-
ty, is no less a form of estimation that springs from the notion of repay-
ment than more recent and refined conceptions of fairness. that we
moderns are no longer inclined to think in such hard and fast terms,
Nietzsche notes, reveals the extent to which the meaning of justice
pertains to an unpredictable fluidity, for meaning is a matter of his-
torical development and such development is contingency through
and through. the rank order of valued things and actions is neither
stable nor eternal: “if someone prefers revenge to justice, according to
the standard of an earlier culture, he is moral, according to that of
ours he is immoral” (Human, All Too Human, 42). the meaning of the
word “immoral,” it follows, merely articulates an un-thought but con-
stantly observed norm: it denotes someone considered “backward”
from the standpoint of contemporary standards. the rank order of
“higher” and “lower” on the moral scale does not, it follows, represent
something that is established according to autonomous, timeless mor-
al principles; but once it is in place this assumption comes to look like
the universal basis upon which judgements are made. cruel people,
Nietzsche comments in line with this last point, strike us as a kind of
living archaeology, throwbacks to earlier cultural stages in the devel-
opment of humanity. cruel human beings are a window on our an-
cient inherited identity: “they show us what we all were” and the gap
that has opened up between them and us reveals the contingent and
constantly shifting status of standards of value.
5. Talk about justice is a consequence of there being creatures like us. Such talk
emerges as an historically unfolding discursive practice that articulates relations
of equivalence and power that are themselves rooted in a blind, organic drive to
self-preservation. The power in question is not, however, a matter of individual
psychology or brute force. It is a condition of possibility for equitable exchange and
compromise. We can dispense with the kind of bodily sovereignty presupposed by
Locke’s “state of nature” theory (the body as possessor of inalienable natural
rights). The body is possessor and possessed only in so far as it is a product of com-
munity, culture, history, and power. It is in being fashioned through these that the
body becomes a bearer of rights.
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As we have seen in relation to section 92 of Human, All Too Human,

Nietzsche envisages justice to be the consequence of a blending of neces-
sary and contingent conditions. Justice presupposes exchange, and ex-
changing presupposes the kind of animal forged by the power of the
morality of custom into the shape of a measuring esteemer. Given the
power dynamic of this created human social world and the vicissitudes
of life, conflicting parties of exchangers will sooner or later meet in a
situation where none has the decisive upper hand that allows for the
domination of one by the other. Justice talk is thus a necessary conse-
quence of there being creatures like us. But the terms in which such
justice is initially formulated, the terms that state what is equivalent (and
hence what is subsequently open to being deemed “fair”) rather than
the relation of equivalence itself, will always be coincidental. Justice, it
follows, cannot be defined in terms of the determinate content of time-
less propositions. it is, rather, an historically unfolding discursive form
that springs from the relation of equivalence being applied to otherwise
intractable situations. Justice likewise stands revealed by Nietzsche as
something that has a hidden history: justice talk springs directly from
power differentials. Moments of “justice,” it follows, do not consist in
the negation of power but are in each case its exemplification. in this
sense, justice can be traced back to an organically conceived self-inter-
est (to the body as a field of drives) underlying the most primitive de-
mand for self-preservation that compelled our ancestors into communal
life. With this revealing of a hidden terrain of power, and in line with the
ambitions of historical philosophy, justice is (rather casually) demythol-
ogized: “so much for the origin of justice,” Nietzsche says, concluding
the account in section 92 of Human, All Too Human elaborated above
(cf. section 2). Revealed thus, justice is now something that originates
in the cultural articulation of a blind egoism, an egoism without an
ego, one that goes back to the drives and the body rather than self-
consciousness. it is the expression of self-preserving powers, the origins
of which have come to be forgotten due to layer upon layer of historical
over-interpretation being pasted on top.
At the same time, it is worth noting what Nietzsche’s demythologiz-
ing achieves here and what it does not. Although even in Human, All
Too Human power is an essential component of Nietzsche’s account of
values, power is never mere imposition and domination any more than
it is ever a matter of merely individual psychology.11 under the right
11 As Nietzsche will put it later in Twilight of the Idols, what matters about our habits is
that they are species habits, rather than merely individual propensities. it is this contention
that divides him decisively from hume, who tends to consider habit to be above all a matter
of personal psychology.
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conditions, power gives rise to the need for negotiation, balance, and
the attainment of settled outcomes rather than forced ones. Power is the
condition that, for Nietzsche, creates the space within which something
like fair and equitable discourse is made possible. Justice talk is not
anchored in Kantian transcendental conditions. it is not governed by
a power-free transcendental structure of possibility akin to an “ideal
speech situation”;12 indeed, this kind of talk springs from a compromise
that is not ideal in any sense. the notion of a settled compromise is a
matter that concerns questions of power. in such a situation, however,
there is no mere imposition of power or will. An equilibrium of power
frustrates the capacity of brute willing (i.e. the drive of interests that
motivates the organism, conceived here in terms of the high and mighty,
the group who are the wielders of power13) to achieve its aims. What is
required is discussion, a meeting of exchangers’ egoisms and conse-
quently compromise. the equality that underlies justice talk, it follows,
is not a neutral space akin to the Lockean “state of nature.”14 No “state
of nature” is presupposed here in the sense of a realm where right of
possession springs from the isolated individual’s claim to a natural sover-
eign legitimacy over his or her own body. Rather, the body is for Nietzsche
a possession only in so far as it is situated and already worked upon in
the domain of culture. it is an exemplification of the community, a kind
12 see habermas’s claim that legitimacy is not merely a matter of dominant norms, but
concerns the manner in which such norms are rendered acceptable (Communication and the
Evolution of Society, 188). Nietzsche’s claim here would be that the very conditions of ren-
dering norms acceptable are articulations of power. Power in this regard becomes some-
thing akin to a transcendental condition of social possibility.
13 Nietzsche specifically has in mind here the discussion between the representatives of
the Athenian empire and the Melian oligarchy that occurred during the siege of the island
of Melos in 416 bce , as dramatized by thucydides. the Athenians wished to incorporate
the Melians into the empire of Athens, and the leaders of the island (not unreasonably,
one might think) resisted this. in thucydides’s dialogue, the vastly outnumbered Melians
are told in brutal enough terms about the reality of power. Questions of right, the Athenian
representatives contend, concern only those who are in a relation of equality. A somewhat
strained justification for this is given: this is the way of the world, for nature dictates that
whoever has power behaves in similar fashion. the Athenians say they are merely an exem-
plification of this principle and so cannot be judged for what they do. the threat is then
hammered home: in the absence of such equality the powerful do whatever they can do
and the weak suffer what is imposed upon them. the Melians, who refused the terms
of surrender offered during this discussion, finally capitulated to siege. the victorious
Athenians responded by murdering all the Melian men they had captured, enslaving all
the women and children, and subsequently colonizing the city. the slaughter that ensued
was held to be an outrage in much of the Ancient Greek world and was the cause of much
Athenian fear and anxiety when they themselves were overrun by the spartans around a
decade later. see thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 400–9.
14 see Locke, Second Treatise of Government, in Two Treatises of Government.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 91 2013-09-20 11:36:10

of illustration of its logic. the body is possessed only in so far as it already

represents the communal human rebellion against the chaotic, lawless
inequality of nature. the body is something fashioned, a conjoining
of primitive organic self-interest with crude communal norms that ulti-
mately serve to fashion the human animal into the kind of being capable
of striking a compromise. With compromise, in turn, we enter the do-
main of rights talk.
6. Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysical naturalism concentrates on natural historical

articulations of rights, duties, and the like. Rights emerge when inequalities of
power are created within or between social orders. Even subjugation creates condi-
tions conducive to rights, since what is subjugated is of value to the subjugator
– as the establishment of slaves’ rights in the ancient world reveals. Rights, like
justice, emerge from power relations and struggle. They are a form of power rooted
in notions of exchange and contract and historical contingency. Rights are also,
consequently, fluid. Any arbitration between competing interests is hence never a
matter of the mere application of a universal rule. Fairness involves balancing
interests in terms of the particularity of context in which they are at stake.
Humanity’s measuring propensities are fashioned in accord with the power rela-
tions that give rise to rights. We are sensitized to power differences as a hound is
to scents. Our acute ability to sense power differences reveals culture to be driven
by power relations. Power is normative, hence power is for Nietzsche the condition
of historicity itself.
conceptions of rights originate in power relations wrought within the

primitive social structure of customary conformity. Rights came from tra-
dition and tradition emerges from “agreement.” in other words, rights talk
presupposes a form of social equilibrium no less than justice talk does.
Once, Nietzsche argues in The Wanderer and His Shadow (39), people ar-
rived at an agreement that worked well enough for them. it came to pass
that the agreement became adopted continuously and unconsciously.
the agreement became “natural” – that is, it became second nature, tra-
dition. As the origin of the tradition faded, so it became sanctified:
“tradition was now a compulsion, even when it no longer served the pur-
pose for which the agreement had originally been concluded.” Notions
that arose out of the necessity imposed upon our ancestors by their living
conditions thereby became detached from their instrumental origins as
a sign of the new, formative power these notions had acquired over the
human soul. Once the self has been fashioned in this way, new forms of
struggle and negotiation become possible.
Rights are established when two groups meet in a relation of unequal
power (Human, All Too Human, 93). under such conditions, the weaker
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is compelled by circumstance to submit to the stronger. however, with

this submission comes the instituting of another kind of power: the
threat that the weaker can always destroy itself, thereby depriving the
victor of the spoils. thus, even under conditions of subjugation there is
a sort of equality “on the basis of which rights [Rechte] can be established.”15
slave and master, too, exist within this framework: the slave is a posses-
sion, but as property the slave is valuable to the master. correspondingly,
certain limited rights accrue to the slave. “Rights originally [ursprünglich]
extend just as far as one appears valuable, essential, un-losable, uncon-
querable and the like, to the other” (ibid.). it is for this reason that
spinoza’s maxim hits home: “unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum po-
tentia valet [each man has as much right as he has power] (or more ex-
actly: quantum potentia valere creditor [as he is believed to have power]).”
Rights, like justice, thus spring from relations of power in which acts of
imposition, negotiations and, above all, the beliefs that form the condi-
tions of such negotiations, serve to bind competing parties already
locked together in new ways. under such conditions, Nietzsche adds, a
limited mutuality can even come from the subjugation that characterizes
the ownership of the slave.16 Rights are hence “a kind of power” (The
Wanderer and His Shadow, 251). this struggle over power, which is an ex-
tension of the conjoining of natural drives and cultural norms that make
human identity, forms the basis of Nietzsche’s most powerful naturaliz-
ing critique. in a gesture that will be repeated elsewhere,17 Daybreak talks
of constructing a “natural history” of duties and rights. this means that
such things can be accounted for in terms that do not require a meta-
physical explanatory framework, only an historical one focused on the
conditions of emergence and transformation of norms and the practices
associated with them.
the duties we have, Nietzsche tells us, are the rights of others over us.
As with justice, such rights exist because the notion of equilibrium allows
each of us to be regarded as similar in terms of our ability to engage in
“contracting and requiting.” One is given rights because of what one is
considered to be able to do with them. such rights are not God-given.
15 Nietzsche again clearly has in mind here thucydides’s account of the Athenean and
Melean dialogue. One of the Athenian arguments in favour of their opponents surren-
dering that is presented here is the contention that this course of action actually bestows a
dual advantage: the one who surrenders does not suffer unnecessary loss and pain, while
the subjugator gains by not having to destroy what will become their possession in any case.
16 A point reminiscent of hegel’s account of the master-slave dialectic in the
Phenomenology of Spirit.
17 Most famously in part 5 of Beyond Good and Evil, “On the Natural history of Morality,”
and in the Genealogy.
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they are contracted within social structures to individuals by others as a

kind of precaution. they are given on the basis of the judgement that
the person given rights can return by way of repayment something akin
to what one has been granted to them when need be: “We fulfil our duty
– that is to say, we justify the idea of our power on the basis of which all
these things were bestowed upon us, we give back in the measure in
which we have been given to” (Daybreak, 112). typically for Nietzsche, a
rights holder is an exchanger, a being capable of understanding and giv-
ing back in kind the equivalent of what has been given to them. i am
given my rights because it is believed that, if needs be, i am in a position
to return the favour in kind. equally, i might be given rights because i
am feared, since granting rights secures the means of avoiding a danger-
ous struggle. the possession of rights and their defence can also be an
expression of self-interest: one party’s loss of advantages might be held
injurious to the party that gives them the rights they have. Finally, rights
can be a gift of the powerful, something granted by those who feel suffi-
ciently strong to be able to donate to another who is weaker. in each in-
stance, however, the same principle applies: rights arise as “acknowledged
and guaranteed degrees of power.” if one were to construct a history of
rights one would therefore be marking out tracings of struggles involv-
ing the enlargement or containment of forms of domination and the
complex of negotiations that arise from such struggles.
All bestowing of rights, it follows, takes place on a plane of relation-
ships patterned by power. if it should happen that “power-relationships
undergo any material alteration” the rights associated with that initial
state vanish, and in their place “new ones are created – as is demon-
strated in the continual disappearance and reformation of rights be-
tween nations” (Daybreak, 112). the loss of a group’s rights, by the same
token, is a sign of loss of power. in this regard, rights and the talk of jus-
tice and fairness that accompanies their assertion and denial are, for
Nietzsche, sites and symptoms of political struggle. On such an interpre-
tation, prevailing social and political conditions determine the precise
nature of the content of rights and duties. Rights are foremost signs of
the workings of the social forces that cultivate equilibrium. the person
who considers rights considers matters of balance in a manner akin to
the calculations involved in using the scales with which one measures out
ingredients for cooking or assesses the precise value of a precious metal
in relation to a norm (e.g. a “gold standard”): “Where rights prevail, a
certain condition and degree of power is being maintained, a diminu-
tion and increment warded off. the rights of others constitute a conces-
sion on the part of our sense of power to the sense of power of those
others. if our power appears to be deeply shaken and broken our rights
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cease to exist: conversely, if we have grown very much more powerful,

the rights of others, as we have previously conceded them, cease to ex-
ist for us” (Daybreak 112). thus, what characterizes rights most acutely
is their fluidity. they spring from the contingency of history and can
be easily swept away when forces flow in a different direction. it follows
from this that the person who wishes to be scrupulously fair stands in
thrall to the vicissitudes of history and must be “in constant need of
the subtle tact of a balance [Wage].” Fairness, in other words, involves
the ability to calculate “degrees of power and rights” with a sensitivity
that transcends the thoughtless application of a predetermined rule.
Nietzsche here reveals himself as uncompromising in his rejection of
the complacent belief that fairness is the mere application of a general
rule. to be fair means to be aware of the limitations of what one con-
ceives of as universal and indubitable: judgements are legitimate only in
so far as they are determined within specific contexts. Like the relative
values of stocks and shares on a modern-day market, the equilibrium
that one may look to in order to supply the rule for the calculation of
rights will never stay where one thought it was for very long. Fairness, it
follows, is “difficult and demands much practice and good will, and very
much good sense” – but it does not demand mere principles.
On Nietzsche’s account, then, justice, right, and fairness all spring
from normative conditions that are articulations of power relations. Out
of these conditions human identity is wrought. since we are beings fash-
ioned by power it should come as no surprise that we are for Nietzsche
worshippers of power (The Gay Science, 13). Nor should we be surprised
that Nietzsche consistently holds “great politics” to be driven by a deep-
seated need to cultivate the feeling of power (Daybreak, 189). this feel-
ing for power constitutes, for Nietzsche, the domain of human sensibility
to its innermost degree. the dim and distant past of human prehistory is
again in no small measure responsible for this. the constant feeling of
threat that our ancestors experienced when faced with a threatening
world of inanimate objects, Nietzsche notes, led them to conceptualize
inanimate nature as motivated by the powers of spirits, and to create “the
most superstitious practices.”18 One sought to make oneself secure
against the dangers posed by unseen forces in the same way as one did
“against men and animals, by force, constraint, flattering, treaties, sacri-
fices” (Daybreak, 23). As a consequence of the constant provocation and
cultivation of this state of fear “the feeling of power has evolved to such a
18 For the primitive human being, Nietzsche comments in Human, All Too Human, 111,
“When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical cere-
mony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship.”
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degree of subtlety that in this respect man is now a match for the most
delicate gold-balance.” We are beings sensitized to power – our social
instincts fashioned so as to be responsive to the most delicate and subtle
differences of power. this betrays who we are and the nature of the prim-
itive communal realm we emerged from in equal measure. the ability to
sense differences of power has become the tendency that most strongly
characterizes humanity, and the “means discovered to create this feel-
ing” practically amount to the history of culture itself (ibid.). culture, it
follows, is driven by power and is, properly speaking, unthinkable with-
out this insight.
humans are compelled to cultivate the feeling of power because the
threat of nature has been transformed through culture into a condition
of existence. Norms create the human sensitivity to differentials of pow-
er, and power relations thereby get expressed as feelings. in the distant
past, the primitive supplicant sought to appease the spirits by invoking
the power of the conventions that animated and influenced the primitive
social world. the so-called “civilized” person of modernity still does much
the same.19 in this way, norms stand as both the expression of primitive
feelings and, in turn, a means whereby such feelings are refashioned into
new forms of significance. cultures are thereby stamped with identity by
the power of norms. in social environments, power is always normative
power – the power of command and convention. this is, for Nietzsche,
akin to a transcendental condition of culture: without this condition, cul-
ture could not be an object of thought. this condition amounts almost
to the opening up of historicity itself. Along with the notion of becom-
ing, this condition is central to Nietzsche’s conception of historical phi-
losophy and hence his account of the conditions under which justice, the
rule of law, fairness, and notions of rights and duties emerge.
19 to recall a passage from Daybreak (section 99) our habits dominate us because they
are linked inexorably with primitive feelings. the realm of feeling is the realm of the un-
conscious, of evaluative tendencies that we simply act on without a thought. We are thus
concatenations of relations of habits which gain their force due to the power of the feelings
that have been cultivated both with and by way of these habits. One must be careful to
grasp the subtlety of Nietzsche’s position here. Feelings are manifestations of the body, of
the fact that we are organic beings and hence creatures of the drives. But they are also fluid
in significance. With culture, the realm of drives and feelings is subject to the power of
norms. Norms harness, modify, and reinterpret the drives and feelings associated with
them. culture, in short, fashions the body and with it the self. it is a domain characterized
by the tension between primitive feelings and norms. this uneasy coexistence of feelings
and norms in unstable but productive relationships shows power to be what it is: a condi-
tion of life. Power does not, on this view, lurk behind things as a kind of essence in a man-
ner akin to the forms of Platonic ontology. Power is manifest; it is the surface, it is lived
– and living something, for Nietzsche, is the measure of what counts as reality.
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7. Historical naturalism requires that the origins and significance of our moral
world and the terms that populate it be reconsidered. This requires a comparative
historical evaluation of the diverse moral forms, discourses, and practices (e.g.
concerning love, conscience, law, punishment, relaxation, even nutrition). In this
way, it is possible to make explicit the nature of norms whose usual justification
resides in no more than unthinking familiarity and to thereby initiate an era ruled
by the demands of scholarship. It is in the midst of this trajectory of thought that
Nietzsche begins to develop further his philosophy of power. Power reveals the senses
that accrue to dominant practices – an insight that reveals power to be a social
and cultural rather than subjective phenomenon. Power thus invites us to recon-
sider the nature of subjectivity. Understanding, for example, can be analyzed in
terms of a struggle and ensuing negotiation between contending drives rather than
as an expression of conscious will. Understanding is a symptom of harmony that
ensues when a balance of power is struck in social and political orders – it involves
the formulating of “a kind of justice and a contract” akin to that between dispu-
tants endowed with rights. In this way, the social and individuated realms con-
form to a common logic of power: “inside” and “outside,” community and subject,
self and body, are conjoined, the latter being a community in microcosm. Any
history of law or punishment, on this account, must be a social history of the body
and its fashioning into forms of second nature.
Nietzsche’s historical naturalism demands that the origins, nature, and

significance of the elements that constitute the terrain of our moral
world – law, justice, fairness, right and wrong, rights and duties – be re-
thought. Perceived from this standpoint, the study of morality now opens
up an enormous field of labour for the curious. it requires first and fore-
most, Nietzsche tells us in The Gay Science, an engagement in the histori-
cal study of all the various forms of morality and evaluation that have
hitherto existed. up to now, every notion that has so far coloured human
life with meaning lacks a corresponding historical narrative. Who hith-
erto, he asks, has sought to offer histories of love, greed, and jealousy,
of conscience, piety, or cruelty? “even a comparative history of law or
at least of punishment is so far lacking completely. has anyone made a
study of different ways of dividing up the day or of the consequences of
a regular schedule of work, festivals, and rest? What is known of the mor-
al effects of different foods? is there any philosophy of nutrition?” (The
Gay Science, 7). in short, although we live through them we are ignorant
of the nature of our norms. We do not exactly know what law is, nor what
punishment might truly signify, nor how the regulation of work and play
modifies those subject to it. We take our own norms for granted and all
too readily fall prey to the bogus belief that we are adequately equipped
with an understanding of these things and consequently of ourselves.
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the world ought, on Nietzsche’s view, to seem stranger to us than it gen-

erally appears to be. Our pretence to knowledge, he notes in part 5 of
The Gay Science, needs to be unmasked as being nothing more than mere
casual familiarity (355). history is unmasking, demythologizing, the
stripping away of the layers of ignorance that conceal and protect the
authority of what is in reality illusory. imagine that the histories of our
key evaluative practices and norms were somehow, someday done. What
would happen then? the consequence, Nietzsche notes, would be the
destruction of the goals stipulated by these practices. scholarship would
have to seek to replace them with itself, an endeavour that would require
“centuries of experimentation” that “might eclipse all the great projects
and sacrifices of history to date. so far, science has not yet built its cyc-
lopic buildings; but the time for that, too, will come” (The Gay Science, 7).
it is in the context of such ruminations that Nietzsche begins to con-
sider power to be a “teaching” (The Gay Science, 13). Power has a special
explanatory value. the consideration of power is what reveals the signifi-
cance of a practice within any comparative history one might construct.
take the example of cruelty, which Nietzsche has already listed as being
amongst those things that demand the attention of the naturalistic his-
torical philosopher. Beneficence and cruelty to others, Nietzsche notes,
are equally effective ways of extending our feeling of power. hurting a
person whom one wishes to feel under one’s power is the most efficient
and crudest means of doing so, since pain is a simple and economic
means of achieving the desired effect. however, more sophisticated ways
of cultivating the feeling of power also exist for social animals like us. For
example, we can cultivate the feeling of power by seeking to benefit oth-
ers who are already in some manner dependent upon us, since an in-
crease in their power brings to us a reflected glory. the more powerful
we are, the more we demonstrate to others the usefulness of their being
under our power – why it is good for them: “that way they will become
more satisfied with their condition and more hostile to and willing to
fight against the enemies of our power” (The Gay Science, 13). We will-
ingly sacrifice much for the cultivation of this feeling, for it is the altar at
which we unthinkingly worship.
Power, as is clear from each of these examples, always concerns others:
it is socially mediated rather than a simply “subjective” issue confined to
the ruminations of a mind on its own contents and dispositions. in the
light of this insight, subjectivity and its attributes are open to being re-
thought. take, for example, what is commonly held to be amongst the
most characteristic of human attributes: understanding. For spinoza,
Nietzsche tells us (The Gay Science, 333) understanding means not laugh-
ing, lamenting, or despising. the spinozist path to knowledge entails an
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overcoming of the passions, an absence of the turmoil associated with

power struggles, that through this overcoming promises to take us into a
neutral realm of pure reflection that spurns judgmental feelings.
understanding is calm, reflective consciousness. For Nietzsche, in con-
trast, understanding is a matter of the logic of power relations (of the
passions, the feeling for power that characterizes us most acutely) work-
ing itself out through the interplay of drives and norms. the conscious
state of my feeling that i have understood something is in reality mere
testimony to the fact that i am in a condition of subjection to something
more powerful than my consciousness. this “something,” Nietzsche
notes, is generally not even badly interpreted by us, since it is not as a
rule even noticed. understanding denotes the consequence of negotia-
tion between the drives. it is the state in which one feels the outcome of
the passions at work – of laughter, lamentation, rancour, and the like – in
a manner co-ordinated under a kind of contract. to understand is to be
in a state of harmony akin to the condition of the balanced equilibrium
that characterizes the agreements constitutive of socio-political orders.
When we evaluate (which for Nietzsche is what thinking and understand-
ing amount to) the drives are at play within us, making competing claims,
seeking dominance. in the aftermath of this staking of claims and the
ensuing struggle there sometimes comes “a mean, one grows calm, one
finds all three sides right, and there is a kind of justice and a contract”
(The Gay Science, 333). this is because “by virtue of justice and a contract
[vermöge der Gerechtigkeit und des Vertrags]” each of the drives is able to
preserve its existence and hold itself to be in the “right [Recht]” with re-
gard to the others. What we call “understanding” is merely an after-effect,
the becoming conscious of this moment; it is the conclusion of a strug-
gle, the ease-inducing sense of justice that reflects a state of equilibrium
achieved as a consequence of the resolution of conflict between compet-
ing elements. the social and the individual realms, right down to the
conditions that govern the workings of one’s private thoughts, thus con-
form to the same logic of power.
We presuppose understanding to be “something conciliatory, just, and
good,” to be something that stands in opposition to the realm of the
drives. in reality, however, understanding is no more than “a certain be-
haviour of the drives toward one another.” the feeling of comfortable opti-
mism that accompanies understanding generates the illusion that the
state of consciousness associated with it constitutes the core feature of
thought. consciousness, however, is insensitive to the drives and their
combat, which takes place on another, deeper plane of feelings. On this
plane, Nietzsche argues, the drives seek to assert dominance by exerting
force and causing grief to one another. the account of their struggle
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thereby parallels on two levels the mode of struggle that Nietzsche holds
to take place between competing social groupings when arriving at a just
resolution to a dispute. First, the same logic is at work in the sense of ease
that characterizes understanding as when justice and rights are fash-
ioned in social orders. the same conditions of struggle, competition,
and attained equilibrium used to characterize the one epitomize the
other. second, the attribution to the drives of the aim to injure replicates
the “teaching” outlined in section 13 of The Gay Science. the social and
the personal are intimately conjoined. the subject (the “individual”) is
an extrapolation of the body. the body, however, is on this conception
never something that can be purely individuated and endowed with a
fixed and unified core identity. it is a society in miniature, a nexus of
evaluative propensities, a communal order in microcosm composed of
multiple elements. indeed, it is nothing less than a “social structure”
made up of many souls (Beyond Good and Evil, 19).20 to write a history of
law or punishment means, on this view, to construct a socially aware ac-
count of the power relations inherent within different practices and dif-
ferent communities and the effects of these relations on the socially
synthesized unity of the body. the history of humanity is, in this sense,
always the history of second nature, of struggles between drives and cul-
tural norms on the one hand and environmental conditions (amongst
which may be included the norms of different cultures and communi-
ties) on the other.
8. Nietzsche’s approach provides the basis for an account of the development of

juridical norms, which are determined by power relations in a social context. It is
in power relations that Nietzsche finds the genesis of herd morality: the rejection of
what is “other” because it is a threat to the conformity conducive to communal
survival. Nietzsche’s approach throws light on how ethical norms, lawfulness, and
a sense of justice develop out of realms of practices situated in webs of power. This
approach also reveals how the will to conformity produces social orders that are not
simply smooth spaces of harmonious obedience but domains of contradiction and
resistance. Here, too, is demonstrated Nietzsche’s naturalistic approach to morali-
ty, politics, and the social realm – an approach that is exemplified by his treatment
of punishment.
consider, in the light of this, how juridical norms develop within a com-
munity. What counts as “moral” and comes to be sanctioned by the con-
tent of law, deemed “just” and hence considered to be something that is
20 “ein Gesellschaftsbau vieler Seelen” (Beyond Good and Evil, 19).
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a matter of right and duty, will always depend in some part or other upon
the situation in which a community finds itself (Beyond Good and Evil,
201). if the community is faced with danger posed by what lies outside it
(and for Nietzsche this condition underlies the constitution of all hu-
man communities since, as has been noted, they are essentially arrange-
ments for the preservation of the weak), then its values will spring from
this extra-moral need for self-preservation. the universal fear of the out-
sider, the conceptualization of the one deemed an “enemy,” exemplifies
this principle. the expression of this fear can take on two forms. the
first is the fear already mentioned: the fear of what is purely other, of
those who are not members of the community. the second is the fear of
dangerous individuals located within the community who have them-
selves been cultivated there as a means of countering the dangers posed
by outsiders. thus, communal development gives rise to internal contra-
dictions. in order to survive external threats the community encourages
the development of individuals whose strength can be as risky to its inter-
nal order as it is essential for the community’s defence. As life gets safer
and more predictable, social structures become more stable and durable
and the fear of the alien, the outsider-enemy, increasingly gets focussed
inward upon these dangerous individuals. in short, the very success of
the community in cultivating violent and risk-taking drives for defensive
purposes means that those in whom such drives receive their most pow-
erful expression now pose a problem. Although their initial necessity is
outlived, the unruly individual endures as a dangerous threat to the
“equality” that is the condition of social order. here lies the genesis of
what Nietzsche calls “herd morality” or “herd conscience.” the logic of
survival gets extrapolated to include all deviance, however pragmatically
harmless. Anyone who looks as if they are independent, who appears to
be dangerously “individual,” comes to be regarded with suspicion and
hatred from the standpoint that is the norm. the community senses in
self-possession and independence of intellect a desire for independence
that threatens its identity and self-confidence. it consequently deems
such “individual” things to be immoral and ultimately “evil.”
things, however, get easier and more tolerant when “very peaceful
conditions” come about. Now the community no longer feels overly
threatened by much at all, and feels the bite of conscience at the slight-
est example of its own harshness. even the hitherto “evil” criminal is
forgiven, and sympathized with, due to the state of extremity they are
placed in as a result of the force of the law being brought down upon
them. the power of normative understanding (the “herd”), which from
the outset hates anything that makes it feel threatened and uncom-
fortable, draws its own self-destructive conclusion. even the “severity in
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justice” of punishment provokes discomfort and comes to be avoided as

much as possible in favour of simply making sure the miscreant can no
longer cause harm. the community thus draws the logical conclusion of
its herd premises. What makes it feel unsafe should be abolished – in-
cluding the very morality that states this ought to be the case, since this
morality itself has the propensity to provoke this feeling, as in the in-
stance of the harsh treatment of the criminal.21 One sees in this account
how the inner tensions of power relations at work within communal
structures are productive of moral norms and a sense of justice. Likewise,
Nietzsche also accounts for the way in which these norms can create in-
dividuals antithetical to them in terms of relations of power. As soon as
one conceives of the social domain as a realm of power it is possible to
grasp the manner in which social differentiation, tension, strife, and in-
stability flow from the attempt at regulation and the imposition of unity.
in order to survive, the community is driven to cultivate contradictory
tendencies.
the account discussed above is presented in part 5 of Beyond Good and
Evil, “On the Natural history of Morals.” here, as the very title makes
manifest, Nietzsche’s naturalistic conception of the moral, political,
and social realms is writ large. common conceptions of the true and the
just are rendered open to doubt. if one might be tempted to consider
Nietzsche’s discussion of the self-destructive justice of the herd commu-
nity as merely speculative, as concerning something fanciful and distant
from us, the following section (Beyond Good and Evil, 202) aims to quash
such a view. Modern european political ideals, Nietzsche argues, be
they democratic, revolutionary, socialist, or anarchist, embrace the idea
of the total superiority of the “autonomous herd.” they all seek equal
rights, praise the morality of pity, and reject the concept of “punitive
justice” in just the way the herd community outlined in the previous
section (201) does. Naturalistic historical critique is thus also a political
tool in Nietzsche’s hands – albeit an unsettling one. its aim is to show
how our conceptions of right, the good, morality, justice, and fairness
have arisen in such a way as to challenge what is today taken for granted
when it comes to the principles that are held to form the basis of good
governance. here, too, lies the motivation of a key aspect of Nietzsche’s
view of punishment – a problem that, from Human, All Too Human to On
the Genealogy of Morality, is a constant presence in his writings. it is to
Nietzsche’s post-metaphysical account of punishment, therefore, that
we turn next.
21 in Nietzsche’s view, modern europe is going through this latter stage of nihilistic
judgement: it is in the process of taking its christian morality to its logical conclusion and
abolishing it.
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4
The Punishing Animal
1. Metaphysics holds us to be creatures endowed with free will. This, for Nietzsche,
forms the basis of a metaphysical distinction between humanity and nature. We
presuppose that natural events carry no moral accountability, whereas human
actions do. One is a sphere of mere necessity, the other of choice. The “criminal” is,
in line with this distinction, deemed “evil” and “immoral” because they are consid-
ered capable of choosing otherwise than they did, i.e. they are held to be endowed
with “intelligible freedom.” Nietzsche’s naturalism seeks to challenge this concep-
tion of accountability and the opposition between humanity and nature. He does
so by seeking to show how the origins of the popular conception of responsibility
spring from false inferences concerning the nature of values, selves, and actions.
Originally, Nietzsche argues, values were communally determined. The conse-
quences of some actions were frowned upon because of the damage or danger they
threatened the community with. Actions with such consequences were deemed
“bad.” By degrees, however, the evaluations associated with the damaging conse-
quences of deeds came to be associated with the deeds themselves, then with the
motives associated with such actions, and finally with the person who does the
“bad” deed. Responsibility, in other words, has a history, and that history begins
with questionable assumptions concerning the link between doer and deed. Free
will, Nietzsche argues, is in fact an error, as is the notion of responsibility that it
justifies. This view informs Nietzsche’s interpretation of justice, as it is commonly
conceived. Such a conception is doubtful since no “justice” in any persuasive sense
of the term can be served by foisting a false guilt on the undeserving.
Metaphysics, on Nietzsche’s conception, has always drawn a dubious dis-

tinction between humankind and nature. For the metaphysician, the
question of what makes us truly human has an answer that resides in the
contention that we are endowed with characteristics and abilities whose
integrity and autonomy cannot be doubted. We are held to be beings
that have souls; who think; to be creatures of consciousness, conscience,
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morality, knowledge, and truth. According to the metaphysical way of

thinking, all these attributes point back toward the human essence that
underlies them: we are characterized first and foremost as beings en-
dowed with free will. it is the attribution of such features and the spiritual
freedom that grounds them that allows metaphysics to draw the kind of
distinction that it does between humankind and the natural world. this
distinction operates on an everyday level – which is another way of saying
that we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, unwitting metaphysicians.
Nature, Nietzsche notes in Human, All Too Human, sends us thunder-
storms and various forms of stress, chaos, even disaster, but no one would
be so foolish as to charge it with immorality because of this.1 People do
not as a rule hold nature accountable for what it does, however terrible,
but they invariably do hold their neighbour to be responsible for his or
her actions. the person who causes us harm (the “evil” human being,
the criminal) we seldom hesitate to judge as “immoral.” the reason we
judge differently in each case comes from the fact that we attribute mere
necessity to nature, but always feel the actions of the wrongdoer to be the
consequence of free will, to be a matter of autonomous decision and
unhindered choice (Human, All Too Human, 102). From the outset of
his naturalistic turn Nietzsche wishes to challenge the presuppositions
that underlie this conception of freedom, a conception that asserts an
unproblematic causal link between individual choices and actions sep-
arated from society, the body, and its history. What he argues must be
questioned is, in short, the “fable of intelligible freedom” (Human, All Too
Human, 39).2
how, Nietzsche wonders, does it come to be the case that people pre-
suppose that both others and they themselves can be held responsible
for their actions? As one might expect from the kind of naturalism that
Nietzsche endorses, the preliminary answer to this question offered in
Human, All Too Human is given by way of a “history,” i.e. an experimental
narrative that turns round the formative power social norms exercise
1 For Nietzsche, even religious consciousness does not hold nature to be immoral on
account of what it does. storms might betray the anger of the gods, but the guilt that has
aroused such ire is of human origin.
2 the phrase “intelligible freedom” refers to the conception endorsed by thinkers
such as schopenhauer. the latter’s “On the Freedom of the Will” argues for the view that
a noumenal, ahistorical will is the foundation of human action. On this view, my will is a
pure faculty, unencumbered by the vicissitudes of history in a manner akin to the Platonic
notion as it is used to distinguish between the sensible and intelligible realms. in Platonic
metaphysics, the first is associated with sense experience and is removed from reality; the
second with the pure apprehension of reality by thought. Nietzsche also associates this
conception with Kant.
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The Punishing Animal 105
over the individual (Human, All Too Human, 39). it tells a story that
depicts a sequence of dubious inferences. One begins with the initial
stage of valuation. First, values are in their origins communal norms.
communities, not individuals, collectively evaluate actions on the basis
of their utility. Actions were initially deemed “good” or “evil” not, as one
might think, by way of reference to the motives that might underlie them
but according to the consequences they have for the social body. such
values, in short, are instrumental judgements.3 this leads to a second
stage. Values, as we have seen, are for Nietzsche always already a matter
of practices and customs. As layer upon layer of practices and customs
accrues, the utilitarian origins underlying the community’s evaluations
get obscured, become over-written, and finally are all but obliterated.4
the prehistoric pragmatic source of valuation is forgotten and the evalu-
ative terms “good” and “evil” come to be taken to signify properties in-
herent in actions themselves, irrespective of the consequences these
actions might have. this condition allows for the third stage, in which
the designations “good” and “evil” come to be assigned to the motives
that supposedly underlie actions. the attribution of motive allows for
the fourth and final stage in which the attributed values and motives are
conjoined in an act of identification wherein one now takes the predi-
cates “good” or “evil” to signify the person doing the action. in this way,
Nietzsche argues, the social order that governs human relations “succes-
sively makes men accountable for the effects they produce, then for their
actions, then for their motives, and finally for their [own] nature” (ibid.).
As soon as one appreciates that this nature is a constituted thing rather
than something given and “natural” – that it is a product of concatena-
tions of drives and cultural forces and consequently metaphysical pre-
suppositions concerning it are questionable – one begins to realize that
possibly nobody can be held ultimately responsible for their feelings,
motives, and actions. indeed, Nietzsche argues, if it is the case that a se-
ries of errors of reasoning underlies the attribution of responsibility,
then the notion of responsibility as it is commonly conceived is another
example of metaphysical mythology.
3 this, of course, does not mean that such values have to be true. they can be false
(i.e. rooted in error and mythology) and function perfectly well instrumentally.
4 the signs that point to the origins of our value judgements are for Nietzsche to be
found in our psychology (i.e. our evaluative inclinations, including our rational and logical
capacities – whose origins are famously irrational and illogical) and in the hidden testi-
mony of language, revealed by etymology. the latter, famously, is the key to the unfolding
of the project of the Genealogy.
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this myth fuels self-misunderstanding and fashions self-interpretation

while we yet remain oblivious to the reality that abides behind it. What
we hitherto considered deep, what counted as fundamental insight into
the anatomy of the human soul, is not even superficial. it is pure error,
bad interpretation that allows a chain of questionable inferences to
generate belief in a mythical individual autonomy and personal respon-
sibility. trace these inferences back and one is in fact confronted with no
more than “the history of an error, the error of accountability, which
rests on the error of freedom of will” (Human, All Too Human, 39). With
this insight, a new and strange moral-free world opens up before us. this
is a world of uncanny innocence, one in which we are all delivered from
the burden of being responsible for who we are. here nobody “is ac-
countable for his deeds, no one for his nature; to judge is the same thing
as to be unjust [richten ist soviel als ungerecht sein]. this also applies when
the individual judges himself.” As this passage implies, Nietzsche’s over-
turning of responsibility is intimately allied to the contention explored
earlier5 that error and injustice are inevitable components of human
identity. however, the implications of this insight are such as to terrify
the faint-hearted conformist. For, if there is no such thing as responsibil-
ity, then there can be no guilt – and no genuine justice can ever be served
by acts of retribution for a guilt that is a mere chimera.
One immediate consequence of this questioning of what has hitherto
set the terms of justice talk must be a new modesty with regard to the
value of one’s own judgements. such modesty demands the suspension
of the egotistical faith that one’s own values and the presuppositions of
one’s own times are infallible. if people are not responsible for what
they do, then one must not too readily judge the past for its violence and
cruelty (Human, All Too Human, 101). Past societies that engaged in “the
injustice [Ungerechtigkeit] involved in slavery” and subjection are, for
Nietzsche, cases in point. in such times, “the instinct for justice [Instinkt
der Gerechtigkeit]” that we moderns have refined so greatly, an instinct
that underlies the trajectory of Nietzsche’s own thought, was far less
evolved. We must be prepared to admit that, taken on their own terms,
even the torturers of the spanish inquisition had reasons to consider
their violent acts to be in the right. the same goes for children (and
also, for some reason, for “italians”6), who Nietzsche considers to have a
5 cf. chapter 2, section 2.

6 One italian, a certain herr zuan, is said to have admitted to being a member of a
gang of children in sils Maria who devoted a good deal of time to pursuing and persecut-
ing Nietzsche as he walked around in the rain under the shelter of a red umbrella. they
would fill his closed umbrella with stones which would then fall on his head when he
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highly developed propensity for deriving pleasure from cruelty to ani-

mals. As we will see, Nietzsche’s refusal to judge in such cases is no mere
nihilistic indifference to the question of judgement. it is, rather, rooted
in an unrelenting commitment to the view that we must interrogate the
grounds of our own propensity to judge; that what we take to be self-
evident is always open to being rendered as alien and strange as the
judgements of the past seem now to us – and in fact usually deserves to
be revealed as such. in this regard, what looks like a trenchant form of
sceptical cultural relativism in Nietzsche’s writings is often something
whose significance needs to be grasped polemically, in terms more close-
ly associated with a tool than a method. it is a means to the end of critical
self-questioning, something open-ended in its implications and conse-
quently an invitation to further reflection rather than to nihilistic aban-
don. As, for example, when Nietzsche contends that we ought not to
judge too readily those who are or have been cruel to animals but at the
same time makes explicit what underlies such cruelty and thereby chal-
lenges it. cruelty can be diagnosed as a sign that something is absent: it
is a symptom of lack of understanding, that shows “the animal has …
been placed too far below man” (ibid.). it is not individuals who must be
placed in question for dubious behaviour, but the culturally constructed
relationships between drives and norms that speak through them and
license or condemn their actions. in this regard, a refusal of the tempta-
tion to judge in simplistic terms is the essential precondition of rigorous
social and moral critique.
2. human, All too human shows Nietzsche pondering a causal justification

for his denial of free will. Like the twisting play of water rushing down a waterfall,
actions appear complex and irreducible, but in both cases this complexity conceals
something that is in principle calculable. Human actions are determined; there is
no metaphysical “free will” motivating an ahistorical self or soul concealed behind
our actions that is ultimately responsible for them. The person who seeks knowledge
must begin by affirming the lack of individual responsibility and refuse the tempta-
tion to indulge in moral censure. Nietzsche attempts the dissolution of the very
distinction that licenses moral censure: that between good and evil. For him, since
the origins of value judgements are instrumental (serving the practical needs of
communities) the differences between such judgements are differences of degree, not
differences in kind. In turn, a person’s ability to make appropriate judgements
in a social context cannot spring from either a specifically “moral” or “immoral”
opened it (see theodor Adorno, “Aus sils Maria” (1966), in Ohne Leitbild: Parva Aesthetica
(Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10:1, 328ff; cited in clausen, Theodor Adorno, 333).
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source. Its origins reside in the heritage of a primitive dynamic of communal rela-
tions and bodily drives. Only by degrees, Nietzsche adds, might a “knowing hu-
mankind” of the sort exemplified by historical naturalism supplant this more
primitive, “moral humankind.” A knowing humanity would be such that it could
affirm the essential innocence of human identity and affirm the amoral necessity
at work in human life. In affirming such necessity, Nietzsche’s new creed for
knowledge seeks the cultivation of new habits of thought that spurn moral censure.
This vision of a comprehending and wise humanity illustrates Nietzsche’s concep-
tion of justice. This justice rejects the hegemony of what has hitherto counted
as “morality.”
in section 106 of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche experiments with

providing grounds for his view. the conception of freedom of the will
that is commonly adhered to is, he argues, a misinterpretation. We have
a powerful tendency to consider the relatively complex realm of human
comings and goings to be a matter of autonomous action grounded in
free choice. As a rule, it does not deserve to be characterized in this way,
any more than the behaviour of water plunging from a waterfall, exhibit-
ing twisting patterns that appear to be redolent with the kind of sponta-
neity characteristic of freedom of the will, would tempt us to attribute
free will to water. What is at work in falling water is only iron necessity.
the appearance of hazard and arbitrariness conceals something that
is “calculable” (at least in principle). human actions are no different.
here, too, an “all-knowing” gaze would be able to compute and measure
every act, every gain in knowledge, every deed of evil or good. the agent
may feel him or herself to be “fixed in the illusion of free will,” but freeze
this moment and an all-encompassing intelligence could calculate from
it the future of every being down to the smallest detail. “the actor’s con-
ception of himself, the assumption of free-will, is itself part of the mecha-
nism it would have to compute.” such a god’s-eye view, Nietzsche knows,
is impossible for us; but its invocation here allows for the denial of the
moral right of even a god to judge. in the same way, the person who
seeks knowledge must take as their starting point an innocent humanity,
one that is utterly unaccountable for what it does (Human, All Too
Human, 107). What has hitherto counted as a key motivation underlying
the desire for knowledge, the urge to judge, must be discounted. the
philosopher must become someone who “may no longer praise, no lon-
ger censure, for it is absurd to praise and censure nature and necessity.”
the person of knowledge must stand in front of humanity in the same
way as the botanist confronts a plant, the aesthete a musical artwork: the
object of contemplation may fascinate, it may be loved for its elegance
or beauty, but neither fascination nor beauty endows either botanist or
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aesthetician with the right to sit in moral judgement of what lies before
them. Why, then, treat people differently? Are we not also as blameless as
the plant in the field or a melody? Are we not as morally unaccountable
as the complex intertwining play of water as it cavorts and tumbles down
a precipice?7
What are taken to be good or evil motives, Nietzsche contends, must
consequently have their origins somewhere other than in the individu-
al’s will and choices. indeed, it is possible to conclude that good and evil
are much closer kin than is generally believed, for they share a similar
social utility. Apparently opposing moral judgements are marked by
differences of degree, not by differences in kind: “Good actions are sub-
limated evil ones; evil actions are coarsened, brutalized good ones”
(Human, All Too Human, 107). it is only the level of an individual’s “com-
petence for judgement,” which is not a morally accountable matter, that
determines the degree to which he or she is driven by brute desire or by
what are taken to be “higher,” normatively determined social goals. All of
us possess “an order of rank of things considered good” with reference
to which we judge our own actions and the actions of others. But the
“standard [Maßstab]” of measure according to which the individual judg-
es is limited, and hence partial, due to its primitive origins. in any case,
“the highest degree of human intelligence which can now be attained
will certainly be exceeded in the future: and then all our actions and
judgements will seem in retrospect as circumscribed and precipitate as
the actions and judgements of still existing primitive peoples now appear
to us.” to think of this may be painful, but we should be consoled by the
fact that the pangs experienced in such thoughts are “labour pains”:
“the butterfly wants to get out of its cocoon, it tears at it, it breaks it
open: then it is blinded and confused by the unfamiliar light … it is in
such men as are capable of that suffering … that the first attempt will be
made to see whether mankind could transform itself from a moral to a know-
ing mankind.” Morality, in other words, must give way to “wisdom.” With
7 Of course, one may ask about the status of the philosopher in all this. is he or she any
less prey to the illusions they unveil at work elsewhere? such obvious problems will lead to
Nietzsche later developing the notion of the “will to truth” as a means of further explicat-
ing the meaning of the pursuit of knowledge. this, as we will see in the next chapter, is a
component in Nietzsche’s mature conceptions of freedom and justice. For the moment it
is enough to note that Nietzsche’s position in Human, All Too Human turns on the conten-
tion that there is a significant difference between moral and critical-historical discourse:
where the one is mythology, the other, if properly articulated, is a demythologizing critique
that spurns any claim to an absolute standpoint on the world. As such, its task is essentially
negative. it performs a kind of ground-clearing for the more positive philosophical project
Nietzsche begins in the early 1880s with Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
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this a new “gospel” will be in the ascendant. this new gospel is one that
brings with it a paradoxical feeling of elation and despair, for it is at
one and the same moment a dawn and twilight. “everything is necessity
– thus says the new knowledge; and this new knowledge is itself neces-
sity. everything is innocence: and knowledge is the path to insight into
this innocence. if pleasure, egoism, vanity are necessary for the produc-
tion of the moral phenomena and their finest flower, the sense for
truth and justice in knowledge [des Sinnes für Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit
der Erkenntniss]; if error and aberration of the imagination was the only
means by which mankind was able gradually to raise itself to this degree
of self-enlightenment and self-redemption – who could denigrate those
means?” (ibid.) it may be, as the opening of Human, All Too Human avers,
that everything is in a state of flux. But it is also contended that “every-
thing is also flooding forward, and towards one goal.” this goal is one that
the mature Nietzsche endorses no less than his more youthful self, al-
though he may cease to consider its occurrence to be quite so inevitable.
it is the goal of cultivating in ourselves “a new habit, that of compre-
hending, not-loving, not-hating.” What will happen thereby is that this
new habit may after millennia “perhaps be strong enough to bestow
on mankind the power of bringing forth the wise, innocent (conscious
of innocence) man as regularly as it now brings forth – not his antithesis
by necessary preliminary – the unwise, unjust, guilt-conscious man” (ibid.).
here, for the first time, is presented the vision of Nietzsche’s new justice.
it is a justice that embraces innocence as its starting point: the innocence
of becoming and the innocence that marks a return to what is natural,
the assertion of naturalism as the only means of explicating the potential
offered by the human animal to overcome itself and thereby be trans-
formed into something better.
3. If we are not morally responsible for what we do, any “justice” that seeks to
praise or blame, reward or punish, is a sham. This view leads Nietzsche to question
further the moral value attributed to punishment. If punishment serves only the
pragmatic purpose of ensuring the continuation of society, then its significance
must be reconsidered. Punishment needs to be acknowledged for what it is: a pow-
erful social tool, not something concerning matters of desert. So long as one thinks
of punishment in moral terms one is, ironically, being unjust. The philosopher
thus needs to stand beyond the temptation of moral judgement. In doing so, he or
she becomes more truly a person of justice than the one who exemplifies the social
norm in their indulgence of the urge to judge others as morally wanting. Nietzsche
calls this refusal to judge wisdom. Wisdom demands that the criminal be de-
criminalized. This view stands in stark contrast to the modern administration
of justice, i.e. the world of penal law replete with its formal conditions and
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institutional functionaries. The practice of law and justice as it is now understood

is, for Nietzsche, erected on the dubious assertion of free will. It presupposes that
the criminal is always already able to distinguish between good and bad reasons
and, for reasons of irrational assertiveness, chooses bad ones reasons over good
and so commits evil. Such an account is absurd. It presupposes the primary moti-
vation for action is intelligence and that the criminal is someone who perversely
elects to flout their own best insight into what constitutes the right course of action.
If this were so, then an individual’s guilt would reside in a pure, irrational wilful-
ness that flies in the face of pragmatic and moral reasons alike. Such a view,
Nietzsche argues, is contradictory. A wilfulness of this sort would, by definition,
exceed the conditions that serve to specify an agent’s rational competence and so
render them blameless.
if one comes to follow the teaching that holds us to be essentially unac-

countable in moral terms for our actions, then it follows that one can no
longer consider a “so-called justice that punishes and rewards [as falling]
under the concept of justice at all: provided, that is, that this [justice]
consists in giving to each what is his own” (Human, All Too Human, 105).
here, the value of values is placed in question; likewise, the justification
of punishment. Punishment, as we have seen, is held by Nietzsche to be
a matter of social usefulness. the one who is punished does not “de-
serve” to be punished but is simply the means of advertising the conse-
quences of acting as they have in order to predispose others against
doing likewise. Nor, by the same token, does the “good” person deserve
reward for what they do, since they simply act as they must in any case,
not from any moral superiority. thus, it is “mankind’s utility [that] re-
quires their continuance,” not any overarching conception of the just
and the good. A powerful instrumental necessity drives the normative
realm of human culture. if we were to get rid of punishment and reward
we might well lose some of the strongest influences that incline us to act
or not act in certain ways, but we would not be morally worse off. We are
driven to judge, to punish and reward, as a condition of being here at all,
but such judgements as we make have no meaning independently of the
environmental and social conditions out of which they are articulated.
this attitude illustrates Nietzsche’s contention that the philosopher’s
role is to furnish a commentary on the realm of human affairs that re-
fuses to succumb to the temptation to precipitate moral censure. the
philosopher is someone who seeks to be just, which means they must not
judge with a view to censure: this is the hallmark of their wisdom. this is
why a philosophical mind reveals itself in its “unbelief in the metaphysi-
cal significance of morality” (Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 33). the phi-
losopher happily accepts that there is no way out of the prison of causal
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necessity, no exit leading out “into the air of free will” and the responsi-
bility that would accompany it, for “we can only dream ourselves free,
not make ourselves free.” there is, it follows, no tribunal of judgement
on the world or those in it that could warrant anyone being held morally
accountable for anything. Neither humanity nor the universe of becom-
ing is blameworthy: “the philosopher thus has to say, as christ did, ‘judge
not!’”8 it is here, in this refusal to judge, that the philosopher is for
Nietzsche a being of justice. One must spurn the temptation to hold
anyone accountable simply for being who they are, for there are no mor-
al grounds for such a condemnation. consequently, one must de-crimi-
nalize the criminal.
With this last claim Nietzsche places himself in opposition not only to
the common conception of justice, but also the functionaries and forms
of authority associated in modern culture with notions of legality and
right: those who administer systems of criminal law and punishment.
the prescribed roles of the professional judges and punishers of mod-
ern society presuppose the very conception of freedom Nietzsche ques-
tions. the legal functionary must always seek “to establish in each case
whether an ill-doer is at all accountable for his deed, whether he was able
to employ his intelligence, whether he acted for reasons and not uncon-
sciously or under compulsion” (The Wanderer and His Shadow, 23). Being
deemed a miscreant means being taken to be a person who, in a given
situation, freely decided that bad reasons were preferable to better ones.
the central presupposition is that the criminal “must therefore have
known” about and understood the difference between better and worse
reasons. Only with this knowledge can a person be held responsible for
what they do. By the same token, only a lack of this knowledge that was
not the result of some kind of wilful neglect of the duty to learn would
serve to mitigate responsibility. the law, it follows, holds people account-
able for their wrong-doing because it presupposes a person endowed
with the ability to know better, someone who can grasp with sufficient
clarity the nature of doing wrong even as he or she does it. the evil per-
son, in other words, is taken to be capable of judging him or herself to
be evil, which is to say that the person who engages in wrong-doing can
be legitimately punished because he or she “intentionally acted contrary
to the better dictates of his [or her] intelligence.” the problem with this
conception, for Nietzsche, is revealed by a contradiction: “But how can
anyone intentionally be less intelligent than he has to be? Whence comes
8 Nietzsche points out here that where christ says this on the basis of the belief that we
are all equally sinful and hence guilty, he does so because he asserts the fundamental in-
nocence of all.
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the decision when the scales are weighted with good and bad motives?”
here, Nietzsche notes, the usual answer to this quandary steps in: one
calls upon the concept of free will. the evil person chose to be evil. the
miscreant’s acting in the way they did is taken to be an expression of
“pure wilfulness.” What matters is their intention and it is the will that is
thereby held to account in the court of law: “it is this supposed wilfulness
which is punished: the rational intelligence which knows law, prohibi-
tion and command, ought to have permitted no choice, and to have the
effect of compulsion and a higher power. thus the offender is punished
because he employs ‘free will,’ that is to say, because he acted without a
reason where he ought to have acted in accordance with reasons” (The
Wanderer and His Shadow, 23). Why did the miscreant do what he or she
did? the account that invokes free will now actually does so in a manner
that pushes this very question to one side. to claim in this way that a
deed is an act of free will, Nietzsche points out, is to make of it something
that originates in unreason. the evil deed has no source and no purpose
that accords with the conditions of rational intelligence – it is pure wilful-
ness. But if this is the case, then it follows that the perpetrator committed
their act without any intention of doing so, and if this is so then they
cannot legitimately be held to account for what they have done. thus,
the very thing that is invoked to justify punishment is left in tatters. the
person who endorses to the concept of free will has “no right to punish.”
4. An action’s meaning is a matter of context and of the evaluations that predomi-

nate in a particular social realm or milieu. In modern society, the law court is best
understood as the exemplification of the dominant normative sphere. It consists of
rules specifying the conditions in virtue of which a person is to be held responsible
for committing “bad” actions and the measures appropriate to punishing them for
doing so. The sphere of law clashes with the alternative normative milieu of the
criminal, who is obliged to step out of a violent social sphere where the justification
for sometimes appalling acts is not too difficult to find, and give reasons for doing
so in terms acceptable to the norms of the legal sphere. This fact, Nietzsche adds, is
why the law court is often a place where mitigation is sought on the grounds of
extenuating circumstances. The gulf separating the realms of criminal action and
legal judgement cannot, however, be bridged in the law court. Fully grasping the
conditions that mediate and condition the significance of a person’s actions would
mean abandoning the desire to find anyone guilty, and this is something no court
can do simply in virtue of being what it is. Nietzsche argues that the habitual
criminal is less blameworthy than the habitually good person because they are more
entrenched in their habits. If one wishes to apportion blame for a misdeed, it might
be better to trace the deed back from the doer to the forces (parenting, education,
and the like) that shaped them, in short society as a whole. At the heart of the penal
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system lies a lust for protracted vengeance that circumscribes the social realm. Our
notions of legality and just punishment represent the enactment of an impersonal
and repressed form of revenge on the miscreant who represents a threat to social
order. Public virtues are, on this view, always avenging virtues. All virtues that
are public, it follows, depend upon enforcing the condition of an exchange in
which recompense is made for a wrong. Other virtues exist, Nietzsche notes in a
manner that prefigures his later writings, that spurn this logic of exchange.
For Nietzsche, action is essentially a normative issue. if one wants to

know what it means when a person commits a wrong it makes sense to
look at the everyday world they inhabit and the conditions constitutive
of that world. the criminal who is completely cognizant of what he or
she has done, Nietzsche suggests, often does not regard their malfea-
sance as so very out of the ordinary and beyond rational comprehension
as do those who judge and rebuke him (The Wanderer and His Shadow,
24). What occurs in the law court is a clash of normative worlds medi-
ated by power. the criminal steps from one normative realm into an-
other; in the one they simply act, in the other they greet their fate at the
hands of authority. the punishment that the criminal receives is deter-
mined in exact accordance with the degree to which those who judge
and condemn lack an understanding of the wrong doer: “Our crime
against criminals consists in the fact that we treat them like criminals”
(Human, All Too Human, 66). the game played out in the court of law
usually involves the defence seeking to illuminate all the elements of
the case that excuse the accused, that show the extent to which he or
she was not able to do otherwise given the conditions they inhabited. in
principle, if the mitigating circumstances of the crime are sufficiently
well known by an accused person’s counsel then this knowledge ought
to end up melting away any sense of the criminal’s guilt. “Or, more clear-
ly: the defending counsel will step by step ameliorate that astonishment
which condemns his client and metes out his punishment, and finally
expunge it altogether, by compelling every honest auditor to confess to
himself: ‘he had to act as he did; if we were to punish, what we would be
punishing would be eternal necessity’” (The Wanderer and His Shadow,
24). the problem with the legal process, however, is that such an ideal
bridging of normative spheres is impossible. the judge can never grasp
fully the kind of knowledge of a crime that would allow it to be under-
stood completely. “Fairness [Billigkeit],” Nietzsche argues, ought to de-
cree the equal treatment of like cases – but given that the mitigating
circumstances of one case may be much better known than those of
another, it follows that the possibility of fairness and therefore justice is
compromised from the outset.
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to enter the criminal’s world, to grasp the conditions that give rise to
their self-interpretive acts,9 requires an ability to slough off the urge to
hold accountable. Nietzsche does not shy at attempting to take such a
step, starting as one might expect with the grounding condition of ac-
tion: habit. criminals, he argues, are like everyone else: they act on hab-
it. this insight ought of itself to incline us to consider someone less
blameworthy for a crime than we might otherwise consider them to be,
“for it happened as the result of a tendency the criminal has acquired
and which he would have found hard to resist” (The Wanderer and His
Shadow, 28). in practice, however, the opposite is the case. in the law
courts of his times, Nietzsche notes, a person who has had a hitherto
blameless life is more likely to be treated leniently than the habitual
criminal: the previous serviceability of the blameless conformist is
weighed against his single harmful act and this person’s punishment lim-
ited accordingly. thus, what in reality occurs when law is administered is
that a person’s past is generally rewarded or punished, which is absurd.
Why, Nietzsche asks pointedly, stop at the point where one does with re-
gard to a person’s past? surely “one ought to go back even further and
reward or punish the causes of such or such a past, i mean parents, edu-
cators, society, etc.: in many cases the judges will then be found to be in
some way involved in the guilt.” the individual is ultimately as innocent
or blame-worthy as the social-historical order out of which he or she has
sprung10 – but who would dare to hold to account an entire society?
What is at stake when the criminal is brought to account? What lies
behind the pomp and regal ritual of the court of law and the punish-
ments it deals out? Nietzsche’s short answer to such questions is that, as
things stand, in most cases what matters is vengeance, in one form or
another. Revenge, of course, is a word that can have many meanings. it
is akin to a catchall, a convenient pouch that, as with all words, one can
use as a place to store a wide variety of things (The Wanderer and His
9 to act, on Nietzsche’s account, is to interpret, and interpretation is a kind of activity.

there is for him no sense in differentiating between theory and practice in hard and fast
terms. All attempts to do so, beginning with Platonism, have merely contributed to the
unfortunate conceptual aberration called metaphysics.
10 Nietzsche’s endorsement of this view, and many passages from the Genealogy, render
questionable claims that for him politics “must first be individual, and only then social”
(strong, Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, 217). such a view, as i argue in the final
chapter of this book, tends to presuppose a liberal conception of the political that the
general tendency of Nietzsche’s thought seeks to overturn. For Nietzsche, the individual is
constituted out of the communal domain of custom and tradition, and the political emer-
ges as something that shapes individuals as much as something that might be shaped by
them (consider in this regard the politics of slave morality discussed in the first essay of the
Genealogy).
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Shadow, 33). Vengeance can be a simple, honest, and direct response,

such as occurs when one hits out having suffered a blow from someone
or something – its purpose is limited to averting further damage. it can
also, and more sinisterly, mean acting with a view to causing hurt. the
latter generally requires time and planning: one must consider the best
means to cause the greatest harm. this means that one does not, as
in the first case, simply seek to avoid more harm for oneself but, on the
contrary, knowingly invites the possibility of yet more harm. Nietzsche
notes that this form of revenge “is a question of restitution.” it is a repay-
ment dependent upon the familiar logic of exchange that assumes one
can determine a relation of equivalence between acts and things. the
extent to which one can think oneself into the position of the victim
upon whom the revenge is to be discharged will determine how extreme
it is, how it can cause maximal pain and loss and satisfy the equivalence-
lust for restitution. it follows that revenge requires a sense of social sta-
tus, for the victim must be deemed “worthy” of the pain or embarrassment
that is destined for them – one would not consider it worthwhile to take
revenge on someone who is already despised.
We are, as a rule, a society of avengers – a rule that has few exceptions.
the law court, likewise, is a sphere of revenge on two levels. One can
pursue someone individually by means of a private litigation – a pursuit
compounded and enriched by the fact that the court of law necessarily
invokes “the revenge of society.” thus, by way of “judicial punishment,
private honour as well as the honour of society is thus restored: that is to
say – punishment is revenge. undoubtedly there is also in it those other
elements of revenge already described, insofar as through punishment
society serves its own self-preservation and delivers a counter-blow in self-
defence” (Human, All Too Human, 33.). One cannot, for Nietzsche, prop-
erly comprehend the nature of the court of law, likewise the modern
penal system that lies behind it or the realm of public virtues that sur-
rounds it, unless one acknowledges that it is circumscribed by the notion
of revenge in all possible guises. Revenge is, in this regard, a matter of
impersonal social utility. the public virtues demand equivalence (pay-
back time) as the price that is to be paid for subversion of the order of
things because subversive criminality creates social instability. For this
reason the practising of clemency cannot be a public virtue. the person
who shows mercy acts in a manner that is inexorably private. they em-
brace a virtue that stands beyond the bounds of the ruling norms of the
social order. that is why “No bench of judges may conscientiously prac-
tise mercy,” which is constitutionally usually a privilege of the sovereign
(The Wanderer and His Shadow, 34). the social order acknowledges as
virtues only those forms of action that have social utility or are harmless
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to it, “those that can be practised without its incurring loss, for example
justice.” hints of Nietzsche’s mature conception of individual autonomy
are scattered in this observation. Any virtue which does not conserve,
which is costly and involves loss, does not have its origin “within society,”
since loss contradicts the utilitarian principle of the preservation of equi-
librium that is a grounding condition of communal and social life: “they
are thus virtues belonging among non-equals, devised by the superior,
the individual; they are the virtues of rulers bearing the sense: ‘i am suf-
ficiently powerful to put up with a palpable loss, this is a proof of my
power’ – and are thus virtues related to pride.”
5. For Nietzsche, the sources of action are largely mysterious and consequently any
claim to know them exhaustively is wholly mythical. “Moral realism,” the view
that holds free will to be the cause of human action, must be subverted. Just as the
value of a person’s labour can never be fairly assessed, for it would demand the
impossible achievement of placing the entire person into the reckoning, so any at-
tempt to estimate the degree of a person’s moral culpability founders on the same
impossibility. Justice, as it is practised, is really a game of consequences – it is
purely pragmatic and instrumental. Consequently, like Christ, Nietzsche urges us
to withhold moral judgement of others. This lack of moral accountability entails a
rethinking of our presuppositions and habits: a re-examination of the value of
punishment is needed. The criminal needs to be regarded as a helpless innocent, as
someone no different from the person who has lost their sanity. Not punishing
vengeance, but understanding and treatment is the appropriate response to the
wrongdoer. The primary aim should be to restore the criminal’s self-respect rather
than denigrate them according to the logic of compensation demanded by “shop-
keepers’ scales.” The concepts “sin” and “punishment” need to be done away with.
In short, the utilitarian logic that dominates the social realm must be challenged
in favour of a vision of a state that regards those who damage it with mildness and
toleration. What is needed is an ethic of mercy.
As we have seen, the belief that we know “how human action is brought
about” is for Nietzsche a “primeval delusion” (Daybreak, 116). Nietzsche’s
condemnation of “moral realism,” of the belief cleaved to by socrates
and Plato that right knowledge will always be followed by right action, of
the attitude that endorses a conception of free will that allows for the
wrongdoer to be held responsible for their actions, springs from this.
Nietzsche’s view is that we must begin with the assertion that none are
guilty and that the assumption of guilt conceals this reality. Justice as it
has been generally conceived is, it follows, not about morality and re-
sponsibility but concerns the practical requirements of social life. take
the parallel example of how work is evaluated in modern society. the
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value of work can never be fairly evaluated by the degree of time and ef-
fort, good intentions, idleness, etc. put into it – such an approach “can
never be just [gerecht]” (The Wanderer and His Shadow, 286). A fair analysis
of this would require putting “the entire person on the scales [Wagschale],
and that is impossible. here the rule must be ‘judge not!’ … no personal-
ity can be held accountable for what it produces, that is to say its work: so
no merit can be derived from it.” the labourer works from utility and is
never free to decide upon what he does or how he does it – and only the
practicalities of social life determine its worth: “that which we now call
justice is in this field very much in place as a highly refined instrument
of utility.” As soon as one perceives the degree of utility in such things,
one is driven to question the attribution of responsibility in all its forms.
“Worldly justice [Die weltliche Gerechtigkeit]” is in this way threatened with
being turned upside down and emptied of its normative content by
Nietzsche’s teaching that no one is guilty, no one accountable for their
deeds (The Wanderer and His Shadow, 81).
christ, Nietzsche notes, likewise sought to abolish this worldly justice,
but he did so not by affirming our essential innocence but rather with
the opposite teaching. For christ, we are all accountable; we are all sin-
ners before God and hence each and every one of us is culpable: “All
judges of the realm of secular justice were thus in his eyes as guilty as
those they condemned” (Human, All Too Human, 81). every kind of
judge is, on this view, “hypocritical” through and through. Nietzsche
shares christ’s suspicions, but not his metaphysics. it is not that we are all
equally sinful and so all unfit to cast the first stone, but that we are all
equally innocent and undeserving of having stones thrown at us at all.11
the individual is part of a whole, an element within a complex of rela-
tions in constant flux – a world of becoming that includes the sphere of
relations that make up the social world of human experience. We must
hence rethink our moral presuppositions concerning the criminal and
his or her acts. the way in which modern society deals with criminality by
seeking to hold the person who commits evil accountable in the sternest
possible terms is regressive. it is as if the criminal brings out the more
primitive aspects of social relations. Look, Nietzsche exhorts, at the
means that are resorted to in order to deal with criminality: “the sly po-
lice agents, the prison warders, the executioners; do not overlook the
public prosecutors and defence lawyers; and ask yourself, finally, wheth-
er the judges themselves, and punishment, and the whole process of the
11 We are, says Nietzsche, no more morally accountable for what we do when awake
than we are for what we dream (Daybreak, 128).
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courts, are not phenomena much more likely to produce a depressive

than an elevating effect on the non-criminal: for no one will ever suc-
ceed in covering self-defence and revenge with the cloak of innocence;
and whenever man is employed and sacrificed as a means to an end of
society’s all higher humanity mourns” (The Wanderer and His Shadow,
186). here is the epitome of the “punishing justice” – the kind of justice
that is for Nietzsche exemplified by the judgemental attitude of the
christian church (Daybreak, 78)12 and which must be “rooted out”
(Daybreak, 13). this is the attitude that has signally failed to educate us to
cultivate the sense for genuine “honesty and justice” (Daybreak, 84).
Rather than seeking to judge and condemn them, Nietzsche considers
criminals to be close kin to invalids who suffer from mental illness.
indeed, he goes so far as to say that there is no “essential difference”
between the two (Daybreak, 202). What is warranted in such cases is un-
derstanding. the criminal, like someone who suffers from an imbalance
of the mind, should be approached in a spirit of tolerance and sympa-
thy. Not punishment but treatment is what is needed: a change of living
conditions, of company; the criminal may even find it useful to live in-
carcerated for a while, as a means of securing him- or herself “against a
burdensome tyrannical drive.” criminality is thus conceived of here as a
kind of indiscipline. if a person is incurable and suffers from themselves
they should be allowed the honourable route of suicide. however, above
all “one should neglect nothing in the effort to restore to the criminal
his courage and freedom of heart; one should wipe pangs of conscience
from his soul … and indicate to him how he can make good the harm he
has done perhaps only to a single person, and more than make it good.”
Present society still wants revenge on the criminal, “and for the time be-
ing the courts continue to maintain our detestable criminal codes, with
their shopkeepers’ scales and the desire to counterbalance guilt with punish-
ment: but can we not get beyond this? … Let us do away with the concept
sin – and let us quickly send after it the concept punishment!” Like the
invalid, the criminal is someone who takes much from society but cannot
return the effort expended on his or her care. Yet, Nietzsche asks, would
anyone today want to punish invalids for this – which means punishing
invalids simply for being invalids? this sounds “inhuman,” yet was once
the norm. Once, primitive societies treated the insane person in a primi-
tively metaphysical fashion, that is to say
12 “Die strafende Gerechtigkeit.” christianity, Nietzsche holds, has made of the earth “a
dreadful place,” one in which “‘the just man [der Gerechte] is tortured to death’!” (Daybreak,
77)
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as a danger to the community and the abode of some demonic

being who has entered into his body … here the rule is: every sick
person is a guilty person! And we – are we not ready for the oppo-
site view? can we not yet say: every “guilty person” is a sick person?
– No, the hour for that has not yet arrived … no thinker has yet
had the courage to evaluate a society or an individual according to
how many parasites it can endure, nor has there yet been a found-
er of a state who has wielded the ploughshare in the spirit of that
generous and mild-hearted dictum: “if thou wouldst cultivate the
land, cultivate it with the plough: then the bird and the wolf who
follow behind the plough shall rejoice in thee – all creatures shall
rejoice in thee.” (Daybreak, 202)
One should bear in mind here that Nietzsche originally worked on

Daybreak under the title The Ploughshare – a title he also initially consid-
ered for Human, All Too Human. the image of the plough proposes a
mode of thought that opens up and overturns norms, which shatters the
stale formality of institutionalized customs and the values associated with
them. in place of the logic of a justice that stipulates tit for tat, compen-
sation by way of like-for-like, punishment determined as repayment,
Nietzsche suggests an ethic of mercy that spurns revenge and consigns
punishment to oblivion. Behind this is a characteristically Nietzschean
point about symptoms. Just as a runny nose indicates the possible pres-
ence of a cold virus, or the excessive urge to control denotes a pathologi-
cal fear of lack of control,13 so the manner in which a society treats its
miscreants tells us perhaps rather more about the nature of social order
than it does about wrongdoers. the best thing to do for the criminal and
society alike is to desist from thinking too much about “punishing, re-
proaching, and improving” people (The Gay Science, 321). We seldom
alter them thereby; indeed, as often as not, those who indulge in the lust
to punish are changed by it, and changed for the worse. Mercy means
letting go, allowing things to pass one by in a state free of rancour. “Let
us not contend in a direct fight – and that is what all reproaching, pun-
ishing, and attempts to improve others amount to … Let us sooner step
aside. Let us look away” (The Gay Science, 321). it is better, Nietzsche
concludes, to seek to direct others by example, or to do nothing beyond
turning one’s gaze elsewhere, than to indulge in punishment.
13 consider the example of socrates offered in Twilight of the Idols. his excessive ration-
alism, his faith in dialectics, points for Nietzsche to a deep fear of overpowering passions,
one whose capacity to grip and over-run him means that socrates must resort to any means
of control possible. see Twilight of the Idols, “the Problem of socrates,” 1ff.
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6. The ethic of mercy Nietzsche proposes does not rest on timeless, universal moral
principles. It springs from his contention that moral judgement is a matter of his-
torical contingency. When one judges others what is in reality being affirmed are
the conditions necessary for one’s own existence. No moral necessity can be deduced
from this. The significance of our actions and the values they enact needs a proper
decoding, one that begins with an acknowledgement of the essential opacity that
surrounds them. Willing thus stands in need of an appropriate mode of interpreta-
tion, which will allow for a rethinking of the nature of freedom. This insight re-
turns Nietzsche once again to the question of power – as exemplified by a discussion
presented in book 5 of the Gay science. Two kinds of power need to be distin-
guished: power that takes the form of standing-reserve, i.e. awaits being used up;
and power that directs, i.e. endows something with a sense of purpose. What di-
rects is usually misidentified as being the most powerful and typical aspect of a
thing. But what is decisive is, rather, the “quantum of strength” that lies in wait
for a means of actualizing itself. Nietzsche argues that having purposes may be a
necessary condition of being human, but which purposes one has is a contingent
matter. Power, it follows, is not in its essence purposive any more than the primitive
normative structure that gave rise to punishing was purposive, or punishing itself
pertains to a moral teleology.
the claim that one must teach by example and spurn revenge in favour
of mercy is not rooted in some abstract conception of right grounded in
an eternal standard set by a universal reason. Questions of right are
raised and answered for Nietzsche by the concrete conditions that make
a person who he or she is, i.e. by the historical conditions that determine
a culture and society being what it is. this, as has already been noted,14
is a matter that concerns the concatenation of drives and norms that is
constitutive of human identity. Our normatively settled judgements
about what is right, the power that lurks behind the pull of the so-called
“call of conscience” that most people are prone to from time to time,
rests upon this tangle of forces that in each case makes us who we are.
One’s judgement that something is right has its “prehistory” in the drives
and their organization into instincts. Likewise, moral judgement rests
upon other historical contingencies, such as what one has experienced
and what one has not. Whenever conscience speaks out one must ask
what it was that gave rise to this call. if one does not, if one responds to
conscience as an obedient servant answering to the command of some-
thing whose authority is simply beyond question, this is evidence of a
lack of critical independence. One thereby merely uncritically affirms
14 see chapter 2.
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what one is and one’s cultural world. “[Y]ou consider it ‘right’ because it
appears to you as your own ‘condition of existence’ (and that you have a
right to existence seems irrefutable to you)” (The Gay Science, 335). But
we can never prove the goodness, nobility, and validity of our beliefs
concerning rightness any more than we can demonstrate the fact of our
own existence to be an inalienable right. What lives is at stake in the liv-
ing and is placed in question by what it does and does not do. its value
and rights are not assured in advance. Living, consequently, is not simply
an expression of belief and will. What speaks through us is in need of
decoding; it requires proper interpretation, which means accepting that
ultimately “every action is unknowable,” since the origins of actions
cannot be traced back to the conscious states of belief that we tend in-
nocently to assert as their causes. this does not imply that human con-
sciousness is completely powerless, any more than Nietzsche’s questioning
of the will implies that he rejects all talk of willing. But what it does imply
is that values and beliefs are always necessarily opaque. thus, it is the
case that “our opinions, valuations, and tables of what is good certainly
belong among the most powerful levers in the involved mechanism of
our actions, but that in any particular case the law of their mechanism
[das Gesetz ihrer Mechanik] is indemonstrable.” One should note here a
development in Nietzsche’s conception of human identity and the na-
ture of willing in comparison with the earlier text of Human, All Too
Human. there, in section 106, the degree of causal determination that
underlies actions is, in principle at least – by way of a kind of thought
experiment – determinable. Now, for Nietzsche, the notion of an all-
knowing gaze able to survey and predict the mechanics governing all
possible outcomes of choice and action is no longer possible even in
principle. Willing is in essence impenetrable in its complexity. the
notion of an objective eye being cast upon the realm of human self-
understanding is another chimera, since beliefs do not have the trans-
parent causal relation to actions that is generally assumed to be the case.
consciousness, in short, is not the direct cause of values and beliefs and
certainly cannot police their domain of meaning, although it remains an
element in the play of forces that speak through values and beliefs. the
“causes” are multiple, the significances likewise.
Willing, it follows, stands in need of a new interpretation, one which
will allow for a more nuanced understanding of the nature of freedom.
As Nietzsche will put it in book 5 of The Gay Science, dealing with such is-
sues as this comes down to a matter of understanding the nature of
power in a new way. One must be astute with regard to distinguishing
between different modalities of power. there is, above all, a distinction
to be noted between the kind of power that gives rise to actions,
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generally, and the kind that is associated with goals and purposes (The
Gay Science, 360). One must learn to render distinct the “cause of ac-
tion,” i.e. that which gives rise to actions, from what brings about “acting
in such-and-such a way,” i.e. what stimulates action in a particular direc-
tion and endows it with a particular purpose. the first of these concerns
“a quantum of dammed-up strength [Kraft] that is waiting to be used up
somehow.” this is like a packet of power sitting in wait for some means
of being brought forth: it must necessarily discharge itself, but how it
does so is a contingent matter. the second (the “how”) is minor by com-
parison. it is, when set against the first cause, “a matchstick in relation to
a powder keg.” strength (necessity) thus lies in wait for the contingent
conditions that allow it to express itself. second order causes include
purposes; they are directive. But it is the first kind of cause that matters,
that which awaits being ignited and expended in one way or another. As
part of his challenge to the hegemony of consciousness, Nietzsche thus
also challenges the view that purposes are initiating as well as directing
forces. Purposes do not motivate actions; they do not lie behind deeds
pressing them on to their goal. the purpose is coincidental. the confu-
sion that generally occurs regarding the strength-that-drives and the
strength-that-directs15 means that one is all too inclined to mistake “the
steersman for the steam.” People, it follows, generally “act” simply be-
cause they are at any one time the prey and expression of a dammed-up
quantum of energy that needs to be discharged: the “quantum of
strength” is decisive in all doing. how someone acts and toward what
end (i.e. the direction in which a pocket of strength is discharged) is a
coincidental issue: the person goes the way they do because, like a ship
caught in a current, they are compelled by the power that expresses it-
self through any purpose that just happens conveniently to come along.
Power is no more inherently purposive than the prehistoric social mech-
anism that gave rise to humanity was. For this reason, Nietzsche con-
cludes in The Gay Science, what is really needed is “a critique of the
concept of ‘purpose.’”
7. Consciousness, Nietzsche affirms in his early and late writings alike, needs to
be rethought in relation to the notion of purposes. Its over-estimated significance is
a product of our own bad and egotistical habits of self-interpretation, habits that
incline us to interpret the world of nature in terms of laws and purposes that do
not pertain to it – an error that is recapitulated uncritically by modern physics.
There is no free will and there is, likewise, no unfree will. Both conceptions of will
15 “treibende Kraft” and “dirigirende Kraft.”
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are errors. What matters with regard to willing is the question of strength, the
distinction between strong and weak wills. In this way, Nietzsche’s conception of
will replicates the differentiated structure of power that, from human, All too
human onwards, characterizes his view of the social realm and the self alike. The
will is always a matter of the affects of a sensible body in a community. On this
conception, the notion of a pure libertarian agency must be abandoned. With this,
one must refuse the temptation to indulge in moral censure, since what is being
censured is an illusion. It is this refusal to censure that is the precondition of an
ethic of mercy. The overcoming of morality, for Nietzsche, is really its self-overcoming:
it does not involve the abandonment of questions of moral judgement, merely the
equation of the good with vengeance, and it does so out of a sense of honesty that
is derived from morality. Moral values need to be dealt with symptomatically. They
are signs that reveal the form of life that extols them in a manner that trumps mere
self-understanding. Penal laws can be treated in the same way. They do not exem-
plify a society’s view of itself but what it feels itself not to be. Thus, what a society
deems criminal always epitomizes those customs associated with its enemies. The
criminal is the other, the alien, the outsider; one who does not accord with the norm
This claim reflects Nietzsche’s contention that the nature of law is a historical and
normative issue. What is punished, what is deemed “criminal,” are those norms
that are regarded as falling outside what a community deems as good and proper.
Criminality, it follows, is always a cultural and political matter.
Like Kant’s Critiques, Nietzsche’s critique of the notion of purpose is

much more intent on detailing the misuses of concepts than generating
positive knowledge of them. it is important to understand the limits of
our conceptual abilities. We must become more careful with regard to
the manner in which we speak and think about speaking and thinking
and, consequently, willing and doing.16 the doer needs to be rethought,
for, as we have seen, it does not possess freedom of will in the “superla-
tive metaphysical sense” often attributed to it – which is the conception
of “rustic simple-mindedness” (Beyond Good and Evil, 21). By the same
token there is also no such thing as an unfree will. the latter point com-
pels us to refuse to adopt the views of those “natural scientists” who
falsely reify our concepts of cause and effect, turning them into substan-
tives that mislead us into thinking of the world as something that can be
represented by them. As with words like “law,” “freedom,” “necessity,”
“willing,” “thinking,” or “doing,” so talk of “causes” and “effects” is also
only meaningful in relation to human communicative needs, and has a
16 One should note that Nietzsche does not distinguish between thought and deed,
concept use and action, theory and practice.
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primarily social and instrumental function: “in the ‘in itself’ there is
nothing of ‘causal connection,’ of ‘necessity,’ of ‘psychological unfree-
dom’; there ‘the effect’ does not ‘follow the cause,’ there no ‘law’ [Gesetz]
rules. it is we alone who have fabricated causes, succession, reciprocity,
relativity, compulsion, number, law [Gesetz], freedom, motive, purpose;
and when we falsely introduce this world of symbols into things and
mingle it with them as though this symbol world were an ‘in itself,’ we
once more behave as we have always behaved, namely mythologically.
‘unfree will’ is mythology: in real life it is only a question of strong and
weak wills” (ibid.). the law-like animal is, in short, prey to the tendency
to the anthropomorphic projection of its regularized nature. Law is a
human propensity, a product of the realm of culture (i.e. a fusion of
drives and practices) that expresses the need to negotiate the environ-
ment in order to cope with it. to take the realm of culture to be a clear
lens through which it is possible to see an undistorted nature is pure
mythology. A non-mythological form of thinking would seek to conceive
of the will not in terms of pushing and being pushed (i.e. mechanisti-
cally), a mythical notion that, perhaps necessarily, seduces the natural
scientist, and brings with it the sense of willing as something unified
and directed. Rather, one must interpret willing in terms of the multi-
plicity of elements at work in the power relations that inhere between
sensations and feelings of command and obeying. the word “will” for
Nietzsche thus denotes a mode of relations that is paradigmatic of the
realm of social relationships that gives rise to human nature as some-
thing concatenated out of the fusion of drives and cultural norms. the
world, as understood in terms of power, thereby becomes a great web of
sensibility, a patchwork of relations between various modes of power-
feelings. that is why it makes sense for Nietzsche to talk in this context
of strong and weak wills. this is a distinction that depends upon feel-
ings, not concepts: it is not conceptuality that defines the will (at best
our concept of the will is a weak and attenuated sketch of something
loosely akin to the affects that accompany doing) but rather affectivity,
the sensibility of the embodied self (which is a community of hierarchi-
cally organized organic elements, i.e. drives) and of the social commu-
nity within which the self is necessarily embedded.
Nietzsche would not accept the predictable response that might be
raised against this view, i.e. that in order to draw the distinction between
strong and weak he is already privileging a formal and hence conceptual
order no less rigid and determined than the ones concerning such things
as freedom, law, and motive that he rejects. the tendency in his thought
is from the outset to attack such claims as manifesting a conceptual
fetishism and self-deception. For Nietzsche, thought is not necessarily
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“conceptual” any more than all language is “philosophical”: thought

transcends our conceptual abilities. concepts characterize the kind of
thought we call consciousness and are related to the realm of language.
Not all thought is conscious17 any more than all thought is ever merely
language. thought is (amongst other things, possibly even at its base)
feeling; and the conditions of this precede it. these conditions are
underwritten into the world as embodiment, community and power
relations encoded as a hierarchical realm of sensory differences.
Feeling, which underwrites our awareness and understanding of pow-
er, is essentially differential: power is always that which is “stronger
than” or “weaker than” and can never be thought about or spoken of
independently of this relational condition. it is an economy of rela-
tions. Power is always a matter that concerns a hierarchy of command
17 consider, for example, The Gay Science, 8. there are different “laws of development
[Gesetzen der Entwickelung]” at work in the conscious and unconscious qualities that every
person has. One set is visible, the other invisible in its workings. Nietzsche likens the latter
to the patterning on the scales of reptiles. seen from a distance this pattering is invisible,
but viewed close-up under a microscope they look like “ornaments or weapons.” it would,
nevertheless, be an error to interpret the significance of scales on the basis of what is re-
vealed close-up. the detail on the scales cannot be viewed in nature by those other animals
for which they are supposed to exist. the camouflaged skin is what it most truly is when seen
(or not seen) from a distance. Our moral qualities, Nietzsche notes, are similar. those that
are visible (“and especially those we believe to be visible”) go their own way, as it were, “and
the invisible ones that have the same names but are in relation to other men neither orna-
ments nor weapons, also follow their own course – probably a wholly different course.” take
the examples of “our industry, our ambition, our acuteness.” the visible qualities that these
terms signify denote something essentially public in nature. When considered in this public
sense, my ambition is the ambition that finds its meaning in the norm. such qualities are
conscious because they are a matter of the community, they are known in terms of one’s
relations with others. On the other hand, however, there may be “our industry, our ambition,
our acuteness” (note the stress here on the individuated, personal “our”). such things are
unconscious, hidden, and defy crude conceptualization. For these no direct means of detec-
tion has yet been devised for they are instinctive qualities that remain hidden “as it were,
behind nothing.” in contrast to these hidden elements, consciousness is the least developed
feature of animal life (The Gay Science, 11) and for this reason it gives rise to errors that
would probably lead to the individual’s destruction all too often were it not for the “conserv-
ing association of the instincts.” “Before a function is fully developed and mature it consti-
tutes a danger for the organism, and it is good during the interval if it is subjected to some
tyranny. thus consciousness is tyrannized … One thinks that it constitutes the kernel of man;
what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him. One takes consciousness for a
determinate magnitude. One denies its growth and intermittences. One takes it for the
‘unity of the organism.’” such an overestimation of the role and value of consciousness has
had the good consequence of preventing it from developing too rapidly, for our faith in our
actual possession of it in its ultimate form prevents us from exerting ourselves to develop it
further. consciousness, in other words, is a mere fraction of thought, for Nietzsche, and
cannot therefore be taken to be its defining paradigm.
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that has inherent within it a mode of exchange characteristic of our

normatively determined willing nature.
When framed within the context of the above conception of willing,
the notion of a pure, libertarian agency whose essence resides in the
kind of moral accountability that serves to sanction the moral legitimacy
of punishment simply shrivels up. Punishment, on this view, can never be
defined in terms of a “moral” practice – it is neither specifically directed
by moral ends nor does it achieve a specifically “moral” end. Punishment
is understandable only as a practice that has its roots in the unthinking
play of social forces. the assertion that agents are endowed with a moral
status on the basis of their ability freely to make choices is simply, for
Nietzsche, a piece of bad interpretation typical of the unhistorical
frame of mind of the metaphysician. What is needed is a new inversion
– a more enlightened “extra-moral” era, an era of post-moralism, must be
ushered in. this would involve the initiation of a culture endowed with
a rather different normative shape, one in which the value of an action
comes to be understood in terms of the manifold elements that give rise
to it. the question needs to be posed as to whether “the decisive value of
an action resides in precisely that which is not intentional in it, and that all
that in it which is intentional, all of it that can be seen, known, ‘con-
scious’ still belongs to its surface and skin – which, like every skin, betrays
something but conceals more? in brief, we believe that the intention is
only a sign and symptom that needs interpreting, and a sign, moreover,
that signifies too many things and which thus taken by itself signifies
practically nothing” (Beyond Good and Evil, 32). the common-sense un-
derstanding that has dominated thinking about morality up to now privi-
leges intentions because it misunderstands the nature of willing as a
matter of free choice rather than as a struggle between strong and weak
elements. What must be advocated, Nietzsche urges, is the overcoming
of this error, that is, the overcoming of morality.18 this overcoming can
also be made intelligible by the paradoxical formula “the self-overcoming
of morality” (ibid.), for it is done out of a residual sense of morality, i.e.
as a result of the sense for truthfulness that morality has developed in us
that has so much become part of us that it compels us to turn on morality
itself and find it wanting. Nietzsche’s transcendence of morality does not
propose an abandonment of ethics – for mercy does not stand outside
18 in the words of terry eagleton, “in Nietzsche’s resolutely naturalistic view, morality is
a function of biology, psychology, physiology, anthropology and the ceaseless struggle for
domination. its roots lie not in the spirit but the body … Like Marx, Nietzsche is concerned
with the natural history of material conditions of morality.” (Trouble with Strangers, 171).
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the realm of ethics: it merely seeks to transcend the desire to find rea-
sons that justify vengeful feelings.
Our conscious judgements and values are, as the above account re-
veals, for Nietzsche defined by an essential opacity. this opaqueness
of our judgements ultimately provides the impetus for Nietzsche’s turn
to a more symptomatic approach to values. taken on their own terms,
Nietzsche will come to say,19 values signify nothing. the values i un-
thinkingly endorse are best read as signs that betray who i am, my cul-
tural world, the hierarchy of my drives (my instincts), my form of life.
the same goes for criminal laws. Penal laws neither express individual
will nor “the will of the people” – if such a thing exists. their signifi-
cance is unconscious: they betray a great deal more about what a
community considers itself not to be (The Gay Science, 43). Laws of pun-
ishment betray a society’s hidden side, that aspect of its normative self-
description that eludes its overt self-understanding, for such laws
present its negative image of itself, the dominant view of what and who
is deemed alien and worthy of being despised. Punitive law betrays the
propensity of any society to regard what is antithetical to it as “bad.” it
is criminal to be like them. in this regard, a nation’s “laws refer to the
exceptions to the morality of custom, and the severest penalties are pro-
vided for what accords with the customs of a neighbouring people.”
Formalized punitive laws are never expressions of an internally ad-
hered to ideal of the good. their function is not to endorse what is
possessed in common, but to outline what is prohibited and lies be-
yond the compass of such possession. it is for this reason, Nietzsche
concludes, that one must understand the paradigm instance of the
criminal to be made manifest in the despised condition of the outsider,
the one for whom, simply in virtue of their being thus, the severest
treatment is reserved. social norms, legality, right, the realm of the
just, are expressions of cultural identity and symptomatic of the ten-
sions that abound whenever, as must always be the case, neighbours
dwell in proximity to one another. What, then, is really being punished
when the criminal is subjected to the consequences of condemnation?
What, in short, is the sense of punishment? it is one of the tasks of the
Genealogy to pose some possible answers to these questions.
8. The Genealogy stands as the fruit of Nietzsche’s naturalistic labours. It pro-

vides an account of human identity that turns on the conception of power, which
19 see Twilight of the Idols, “the Problem of socrates,” 2. see also the discussion of this
in the conclusion.
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is now called “will to power,” already outlined in a provisional way in the middle-
period writings. Nietzsche seeks to show how being human has always meant being
fashioned by norms that weave together notions of punishment, suffering, and
guilt. We are the punishing animal. This tendency springs from our prehistoric
inheritance and is a consequence of the nature of the most primitive proto-human
communities being founded on the relationship between creditor and debtor.
Against this backdrop two forms of competing moral discourse emerge: noble and
slave morality. Noble domination creates the impotent slave’s desire for a revenge
that can only be taken in thought rather than deed. This is the source of the moral-
ity of ressentiment. What the slave calls “justice” is in reality the expression of a
desire for vengeance that sanctifies punishment by giving it moral respectability.
The Genealogy challenges the hegemony of this ethics.
On the Genealogy of Morality, in may ways Nietzsche’s most mature and

certainly his most experimental text, seeks to articulate the implications
of the “historical philosophy” first outlined in Human, All Too Human. As
such, the text of the Genealogy bears the fruit of Nietzsche’s initial natu-
ralistic philosophical labours (see Preface, 4, 2–3). the Genealogy seeks
to develop a post-metaphysical account of how valuing, esteeming ani-
mals like us came into being. Where metaphysics responds to the nature
of values by holding them to pertain to a pure and unchanging meaning
that springs from a miraculous origin, the Genealogy embraces the impli-
cations of affirming the shifting domain of history as the source one
must look to in order to decode the terrain of the values we unthink-
ingly inhabit and thus enact. Given the interest in the social dimension
of power evidenced in Nietzsche’s earlier texts, it should come as no
surprise that the domain the Genealogy explores is one inexorably consti-
tuted out of relations of power. “Will to power” lurks within the notions
of right, fairness, equilibrium, equality, and justice that make up the
vocabulary of moral discourse. the three essays that comprise the
Genealogy, arranged in an order almost designed to defy the reader by
privileging polemic over interpretive ease, seek through this power anal-
ysis to challenge metaphysical presuppositions concerning the origins
of such notions. We are in this way urged to reinterpret our evaluative
abilities and the role that values play in human culture. in short,
Nietzsche urges us to consider a new approach to questions of truth,
right, and justice.
these elements are bound together in the text by a common thematic
thread that Nietzsche constructs by a careful uncovering of the degree
to which the notions of suffering, punishing, and valuing are entwined
with one another. We are, the third and final essay of the Genealogy con-
cludes, the suffering animal, for it is the human lot that each of us is
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overwhelmingly susceptible to suffering from its own existence (Genealogy,

iii, 28). We suffer in this way because, as the second essay tells us, we are
the punishing, guilt-conscious animal (Genealogy, ii, 4ff). in other words,
we are creatures of norms – that is, creatures that both fashion and are
fashioned by norms. We are driven to judge and in doing so come to
judge ourselves also. We are the punishing animal because of the evalu-
ative legacy we inherit from our ancestry. Punishment, the second essay
of the Genealogy argues, was the means whereby primitive, proto-humanity
inadvertently imposed rules of behaviour upon itself and thereby initi-
ated the break from nature that led to its inhabiting the domain of cul-
ture. this was achieved at the cost of the creation of the feeling of guilt
engendered by the fact that our ancestors had their natural drives sub-
jected to the tyrannical power of communal norms – to the containing
and constraining power of custom and law. it is in the context of this
account of culture that the first essay, “‘Good and evil,’ ‘Good and Bad,’”
offers its account of two forms of competing moral discourse, those of
the noble and the slave (Genealogy, i, 2–6, 10). these moral discourses,
Nietzsche argues, spring from the creation of a social order in which the
enforcement of power becomes conjoined with notions of suffering and
punishing in a specific way. the noble’s assertion of power (expressed as
self-affirmation, as “noble morality”) gives rise to the suffering and guilty
impotence of the subjugated. the suffering experienced by those who
are on the receiving end of noble assertiveness generates a form of ethi-
cally expressed resistance in which the deep-rooted conjoining of suffer-
ing, guilt, and punishment is given expression in the moral discourse of
the victim (“slave morality”). the powerful noble’s domination of the
slave constitutes them as suffering beings denied recourse to all practical
means of countering their suffering condition. the consequence of this
is that the victim takes succour in the form of a spiritual-moral discourse
– a discourse that springs from a dispossessed faction of the nobility, the
class of the priest (Genealogy, i, 7). Priest and slave conjoin to counter
noble tyranny in the guise of the morality of “ressentiment” (i, 10). under
the guiding power of the priest, the noble is cursed as evil and con-
demned to everlasting suffering in a hell sanctioned by the pursuit of a
“just” world in which the downcast will be empowered eternally.20 here,
for Nietzsche, lies the source of the morality of revenge that finds its
fullest flowering in the shape of christian ethics. the slave’s conception
of justice is in fact an urge to revenge that draws on deep and dark
20 Nietzsche makes it clear enough in the third essay of the Genealogy that in reality it is
not the subjugated who are empowered by this morality but the class of the priest (i,
11–15).
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propensities underlying the prehistoric conditions of humanity’s emer-

gence from nature. Just as punishment fashioned human identity in a
decisive way during its primitive, formative stages so punishment and the
pleasure in punishing reasserts itself in slave-inspired christian moral
discourse as “justice”: this so-called “justice” is in fact masked ven-
geance.21 the Genealogy aims to challenge the hegemony of this ethics of
revenge. its primary justification for this resides in Nietzsche’s conten-
tion that justice, properly understood, cannot be served by endorsing
punishment since punishment cannot be justified in moral terms and is
therefore strictly speaking unjust.
9. Punishment is a notion peculiar to humans, and a precondition of the develop-

ment of cultural life. It is rooted in the communal demand that anti-social drives
be mastered or liquidated and is indelibly stamped into the history of the emergence
of our promising nature. Here lie the origins of “moral memory” and the path that
leads to human culture. Punishment has, however, no moral justification at its
roots. Its violence underlies much we hold to be worthy.
What is peculiar about punishment is that it is a form of behaviour un-

like anything exhibited by other animals. Only the “animal man,” as
Nietzsche calls us (Genealogy, ii, 3), punishes. the reason for this is in
some respects simple enough. Proto-humanity began to punish as soon
as primitive individuals began to live together. Punishment is a precondi-
tion of human sociality. Without it the social bond that holds communi-
ties together could not be forged, for it enforces the law of tradition and
custom. it is because of this need for social cohesion, Nietzsche tells us,
that humankind emerges as a species of promisers (Genealogy, ii, 1).22
envisage a group of proto-human creatures forced into communal exis-
tence by circumstance. What matters when it comes to the question of
survival in such a community is not the life of any individual member but
the continuance of the community itself. herein lies the problem that
21 slave morality “[a]s the will to the truly non-existent ‘second world,’ which guides
the weak, is a disguised will to power in the only real world, [and] it is also a disguised will
to nothingness, in the radical sense of the word.” (Müller-Lauter, Friedrich Nietzsche, 49). in
other words, metaphysics and politics are, for Nietzsche, bedfellows.
22 For Gillian Rose, the opening to the second essay of the Genealogy is ironic in tone.
the irony in the passage in Genealogy, ii, 1 where Nietzsche talks of nature “breed[ing] an
animal that is able to make promises” lies in the knowing invocation of a nature that can-
not, on Nietzsche’s own account, possibly exist: a “contract presupposes complex social
and ethical relations … and in turn, contractual relations give rise to, or form, internalized
identities – the moralization of legal concepts” (The Broken Middle, 185). clearly, the read-
ing offered in the present volume is indebted to this insight.
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the community must face: the primitive individual is initially merely a

bundle of drives, a body whose sociality is confined to its inner organiza-
tion, i.e. to the relationship stipulated between cells and functions. such
a body is endowed with dispositions that it acts upon with a view to their
fulfilment. sexual desire and hunger are cases in point. they are respon-
sive drives constituted out of the relationship any organic body must
have to its environment if it is to survive. Both serve to ensure the con-
tinuation of the individual and thereby the species. But if unhindered,
such desires do not necessarily harmonize with the conditions that
ensure the continuance of community (Genealogy, ii, 3). communal sur-
vival is something long-term, a thing that necessitates limiting the short-
lived immediacy of desires replete with anti-social propensities. the
“primitive requirements of social life” must be satisfied (ibid.), which
means that the individual must somehow be prevented from acting in
such a way as to bring about harm to the communal whole. A special
kind of memory must be made (Genealogy, ii, 1–2). the individual must
be made to conform. conformity is an achievement – albeit an uncon-
scious one. it is also an achievement that is mired in blood (Genealogy, ii,
3). social actors must be rendered predictable, they must be made akin
to their fellows, and able to take on commitments and then follow them
through. this requires, amongst other things, the development of tem-
poral understanding, for without it no memory of something now past
could be acknowledged as having a claim on one’s present and future
actions. As Nietzsche notes, this memory is attained simply and labori-
ously enough through sustained punishment: it is beaten and battered
onto the body through violent discipline, so that, through the stimulus
of pain, the individual comes to remember what is prohibited and to re-
frain from doing it.23 through the administration of punishment we
stand on the doorstep of culture.
community begins with punishment, with “that particular instinct
[Instinkt] which discovered that pain was the most powerful aid to mne-
monics. the whole of asceticism belongs here as well: a few ideas have to
be made ineradicable, ubiquitous, unforgettable, ‘fixed’ in order to hyp-
notize the whole nervous and intellectual system through these ‘fixed
ideas’” (Genealogy, ii, 3). thus, sociality is the conduit through which
drives are concatenated into determinate relations. Only thereby is hu-
man sensibility possible, for sensibility is rooted in the propensity to re-
spond to environmental conditions that arises from the imprinting by
23 the means to this end is torture: “‘A thing must be burnt in so that it stays in the
memory: only something which continues to hurt stays in the memory’ – that is a propos-
ition from the oldest (and unfortunately the longest-lived) psychology on earth.”
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social forces of specific interpretative tendencies (“fixed ideas”) on the

individuated body. Pain takes on significance because it fulfils a social
function – it pertains to “meaning” because it has a normative content
determined by its amenability to serving the power of social demands,
e.g. “i suffer because i am guilty of breaking this or that custom.”
Nietzsche thereby develops the thesis already formulated in Human, All
Too Human, which holds punishment to have only instrumental value. in
the Genealogy, however, the complexity and richness of the thesis is ex-
panded. What is addressed concerns not merely the moral value – or lack
thereof – of punishment, but the constitutive role that punishing prac-
tices play in forging the normative sphere. Punishing is the instrument
by way of which what is subsequently called “moral commitment” (the
ability to promise) is rendered possible. it is the condition in virtue of
which the human world as a world of norms is brought about. What is
usually referred to as our “rationality” is one of the consequences of this
unconscious, instrumental fashioning of the socialized self: “With the
aid of such images and procedures, man was eventually able to retain
five or six ‘i-don’t-want-to’s’ in his memory, in order to enjoy the advan-
tages of society – and there you are! With the aid of this sort of memory
people finally came to ‘reason!’” (Genealogy, ii, 3). Our rationality is not
grounded in thought understood as abstract reflection, but rather devel-
ops out of an activity that is always already concrete, an intervention that
jangles nerves, slices flesh, and snaps bones as it is refracted through
practices. thus, the human ability to reason, to reflect on emotions and
desires rather than merely act upon them – i.e. one of the things that
makes up the great privilege and “splendour” of being human – has its
origin in violence: “how much blood and horror lies at the basis of all
‘good things!’” Nietzsche adds with characteristically acid irony.
Nietzsche’s irony hints at the fact that there is something uncanny
about this violence. it is impersonal and takes the form of a collective
reaction to an individual who has transgressed the bounds of the social
bond and thereby threatened the unity that is a prerequisite of survival.
Yet this violence is at the same time something that is acted out on the
individual with results that are (albeit unthinkingly and unintentionally)
creative. From the outset of Nietzsche’s narrative, the individual is ren-
dered a being equipped with the potential for individuality by way of the
imposition of the regularized discipline of communal order. individuality,
in other words, is attained only at the price of punishment.
10. Out of punishing practices our ancestors sculpted the contractual relationship
wherein promises were made that refined the practical concepts of equivalence, ex-
change, possession, and personhood. With this the notion of justice emerged: a
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wrong can be compensated for by an exchange of something equivalent to the dam-

age suffered. Speaking in this crude sense, we are always already legal beings, i.e.
subject to the law of exchange and compensation. Cruelty and power thus reside at
the historical core of the legal and moral spheres. Behind such things as the feeling
of human superiority over animals, formalized legal relationships, the ability to
compare and count, equity, equality, even thought itself, can be found the legally
constituted condition of power relations known as “justice.” “Power,” here, is not
mere domination but domination within a realm of rule-like behaviour, the realm
of law. All human communities emerge on the basis of this condition of domina-
tion, which fashions selfhood. Conceptions of others, of those who are “like us” but
alien or enemies, likewise originate in this condition: the outsider relative to the
community is one beyond the law, a non-person for whom the brutality of war is
reserved. War provides the template for all forms of punishment. This does not,
however, entitle us to draw conclusions about the meaning of punishment.
Something’s origins do not determine its meaning and purpose. Purposes are
signs: they are symptoms of one thing’s being put to use by a superior power.
Punishment needs to be interpreted with this in mind. It has two aspects: the “rela-
tive permanence” characteristic of practices, rituals etc., and the meaning, aim,
and anticipatory feelings that accompany it. Punishment, as procedure, conceals
a plurality of meanings. It cannot, consequently, be necessarily connected with
morality or justice.
Punishment is, for Nietzsche, the basis of culture (Genealogy, ii, 3). its
centrality to human life is revealed by the fact that we have been nothing
if not inventive when it comes to the task of giving pain to our own kind.
At the hands of their own kind, people have been stoned, broken on the
wheel, impaled, trampled, drawn and quartered, boiled alive, burned,
and flayed – and all with collective, official, and even divine sanction.
One can hardly ignore this violence unless one is wilfully inclined to skip
over the less amenable aspects of history and write a sanitized and sickly
fantasy in place of genuine history. Punishment is a legacy. it is not mere-
ly the means whereby our primitive proto-human forbears were ren-
dered fit for social life and in turn became open to being transformed
into beings like us; its influence permeates the domain of culture, consti-
tuting its fundamental conditions. Punishing practices generate the kind
of precepts we subsequently come to deem “moral.” Punishment is, in
this sense, autochthony. it marks the passage of humanity from living
clay into lived culture, the transformation from mere organic becoming
into the history that gives birth to the self. the first selves meet, Nietzsche
argues, on terrain marked out by punishment. the inflicting of pain in
requital for a wrong characterizes the initial exchanges between persons.
the basis of the model Nietzsche develops here resides in the notion of
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law and contract. More specifically, it resides in the legal concepts of

credit, debit, and the rights that pertain to one who is a possessor of
goods – especially, the rights such a possessor has over the body of an-
other who is indebted to him (Genealogy, ii, 4).
Moral discourse generally (rather than specifically noble or slave dis-
course) owes its origins to the creditor-debtor relationship. What we call
“guilt,” the abstract feeling of being morally culpable, springs from the
concrete condition of indebtedness to another. Punishment and debt
are thus entwined from the outset. But this entwinement does not ini-
tially include the kind of guilt that is associated with any conception of
the “freedom of the will.” to think of punishment as retribution for a
misdeed on the part of someone endowed with freedom of choice pre-
supposes a vast array of concepts that could not have sprung up fully
formed in primitive societies. the seemingly “inescapable thought” we
feel compelled by, the one that holds that a miscreant is punished be-
cause he or she could have acted differently, is “an extremely late and
refined form of human judgment and inference” that does not have a
place in the “psychology of primitive man” and hence in any account of
the origins of punishment (Genealogy, ii, 4). Against the view that punish-
ment was originally directed at someone who was responsible for his or
her actions, Nietzsche argues that for the majority of “human history”
punishment was in fact directed at wrongdoers in the same manner that
“parents still punish their children.” A wrongdoer was punished simply
as a corrective to unacceptable behaviour. underlying the development
of punishment, law, and justice, Nietzsche argues, is the idea not of
freedom but of equivalence, which is something “primeval, deeply root-
ed and perhaps now ineradicable.” this notion got its “power [Macht]”
from “the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor,” a thing
that is “as old as the very conception of a ‘legal subject’ [Rechtsubjekte]
and itself refers back to the basic forms of buying, selling, bartering,
trade and traffic.” contractual relationships of a legal nature, ones that
spring from the socially mediated realm of punishing practices, are of
central importance to the evolution of promising and thus moral re-
sponsibility because they are constitutive of it: “Precisely here, promises are
made; precisely here the person making the promise has to have a mem-
ory made for him” (Genealogy, ii, 5). the debtor has to guarantee the
promise of paying back the debt and the duty of this obligation must be
etched into the debtor’s understanding to ensure this. this is done by
way of the imposition of a substitute payment if the promise is not kept.
Failure to repay the debt brings with it a forfeit on the part of the debtor:
“in particular, the creditor could inflict all kinds of dishonour and tor-
ture on the body of the debtor, for example, cutting off as much flesh as
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seemed appropriate for the debt.” Nietzsche’s central point is now ham-
mered home. What is really at stake within this notion of compensation
is not just desert but the pleasure of power exercised in a social hierar-
chy. the creditor, in exercising their right of compensation, “takes part
in the right of the masters: at last he, too, shares the elevated feeling of de-
spising and maltreating someone as an ‘inferior’” (ibid.). this is also the
case if punishment has become a formalized legal matter and is meted
out by “the ‘authorities.’” Punishment is in its origins a formally sanc-
tioned (legal) inflicting of pain, and it is in this respect that it is an es-
sential element in the emergence of human self-understanding. We are,
in this cruel and primitive sense, already legal beings, i.e. subject to the
disciplined imposition of law, before we even begin to talk of responsibil-
ity, freedom, law, justice, and the like. the sphere of legality outlined
above gives rise to a host of moral notions. it is here that the human
“moral conceptual world” is fashioned (Genealogy, ii, 6). Only once this
legally encoded ordering of social space is articulated do notions such as
“guilt,” “conscience,” and “duty” arise.
Nietzsche is happy to admit that the above account is a matter of con-
jecture – after all, it concerns a hidden world that is difficult to interpret
(Genealogy, ii, 6). he is also keen to develop the account further. the
legally constituted relationship between creditor and debtor underlies
our self-understanding and even our mental capacities (Genealogy, ii, 8).
the origins of thought itself, perhaps, reside in the observances that
bind creditor and debtor together in this “most primitive” of personal
relationships. Only with the refinement of this communally articulated
condition of human life does the world of formalized social relationships
begin to appear. One begins with the activities of buying and selling,
calculating and comparing power with power, which provide the basic
conception of individual right. these, in turn, are transferred to the
coarsest of initial social complexes. thus, ideas of duty, right, debt, and
compensation are subsequently given a socio-legal dimension. the no-
tion of a person as the possessor of a legal entitlement to rights and
compensation for suffering a wrong finds its origins in this transference.
With this development of the concept of entitlement, a “great general-
ization” emerged: “‘everything has its price: everything can be compen-
sated for.’” here, says Nietzsche, echoing the discussions presented in
The Wanderer and His Shadow,24 can be found “the oldest, the most naïve
canon of morals relating to justice, the beginning of all ‘good natured-
ness,’ ‘equity,’ all ‘good will,’ all ‘objectivity’ on earth. Justice at this first
24 see chapter 3.
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level is the good will, between those who are roughly equal, to come to
terms with each other, to ‘come to an understanding’ again by means of
a settlement – and, in connection with those who are less powerful, to
force them to reach a settlement amongst themselves” (ibid.). Justice,
properly understood, presupposes the kind of equilibrium and equality
of power that typifies Nietzsche’s earlier discussions in The Wanderer and
His Shadow and elsewhere. Justice, once again, is inextricably linked to
relations of power. Power, in turn, is no simple matter of the strong dom-
inating the weaker by subordinating them to the capriciousness of an
arbitrary will. it is, rather, the sphere where capriciousness ceases, where
the condition of settling disputes and struggling against those who have
power over one is rendered paramount. it is the sphere in which rules
trump brute force.
the legally encoded creditor-debtor relationship is, on the view
Nietzsche now develops in the Genealogy, the basic condition of all com-
munities. From the outset, the most primitive community is akin to a
creditor, its individual members akin to debtors. so long as one lives in
such a social world, one enjoys the benefits of the community’s protec-
tion and thereby stands in a relation to it of indebtedness. the one who
breaches the terms of this relationship is the villain, the breaker of the
social bond “who has broken his contract and his word to the whole …
the lawbreaker is a debtor who not only fails to repay the benefits and
advances granted to him, but also actually assaults the creditor.” the
community takes revenge for this. the criminal is punished, which
means he or she is subjected to something akin to the savagery that lies
outside the protective domain of the community’s power: the power of
communal protection is withdrawn from them. Punishment is an expres-
sion of reactive sentiment. One should again note the continuity of this
observation with Nietzsche’s earlier comments, for example in section
43 of The Gay Science.25 the identity of a community does not turn on its
understanding of itself but on those who it regards as its antitheses – the
enemies or aliens, those who are culturally other. Punishment within the
community is a “copy” of the treatment usually reserved for enemies de-
feated in war, i.e. those who have no rights, who lack even the entitle-
ment to mercy since they do not qualify for the status of personhood.
From the outset, the community looks outwards and greets the other
with war and the war-like practices and rituals of war directed towards
obliterating what lies “outside” the community. the community’s rela-
tion to its enemies gets refracted back into it in a decisive manner. War,
25 see this chapter, section 7.
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Nietzsche argues, is the source of all ways of punishing: “war itself (in-
cluding the warlike cult of the sacrificial victim) has given us all the forms
in which punishment manifests itself in history” (Genealogy, ii, 9). the
history of punishment, it follows, is entangled with the merciless propen-
sity to wage war.
War endows us with the forms of punishment, just as credit and debit
endow us with the conditions of personhood that get articulated into the
legal subject. however, one ought not to feel emboldened to derive any
determinate meaning about the nature of legality or punishment from
this. to recall section 360 of The Gay Science,26 one must distinguish be-
tween the power that awaits expression and the power that directs and
gives meaning. Questions about origins and questions about purposes
are separate matters (Genealogy, ii, 12). it is possible to see in law and
punishment today, Nietzsche notes, the enactment of purposes, such as
those of “revenge or deterrence.” however, when properly understood,
punishing practices teach us something quite different. When viewed in
terms of their historical origins and development, punishing practices
and rituals do not have a determinate sense. One cannot discover a pur-
pose from simply narrating the story of a thing’s emergence into history
– which is, after all, the narration of the emergence of a ritual or prac-
tice, not a meaning associated with it. thus, whatever one may discover
about the history of law’s emergence27 one cannot derive a fixed mean-
ing concerning the law that has come about with it. history is a chain of
differing and competing interpretations. the interpretation of a thing
necessarily reinterprets and so overwrites the previous senses that may
be attributed to it. Moreover, a reinterpretation can be so radical that
the earlier meanings associated with something become irretrievable.
interpretation is thus akin to inscription in so far as a thing’s earlier
meaning can be almost literally scratched out. this is why one has to
learn different ways of telling stories about life. the current utility of
anything, whether it be a bodily organ, religious ritual, or “legal institu-
tion,” tells one nothing about its origins. Purposes are not to be confused
with origins. All purposes are signs. every purpose is akin to a symptom,
i.e. is something that reveals the putting to use of one thing by another,
superior thing. A stipulated end reveals the immanence of power or “will
to power.”28 Our view of history must change if we accept this argument.
A thing’s history is a “continuous chain of signs, continually revealing
26 see the discussion in section 6.

27 “Entstehungsgeschichte des Rechts.”
28 the will to power thus denotes the priority of activity, the manifestation of the
“life-will.”
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new interpretations and adaptations, the causes of which need not be

connected even amongst themselves, but rather just follow and replace
one another at random” (ibid.). history is an amalgam of conflicting
purposes, of power struggles, but this very variety and multiplicity of pur-
poses means that it is devoid of the kind of conceptual unity associated
with a universal purpose. history, in other words, is not going anywhere
– it is unbridled contingency. it is the unpredictable playing out of rela-
tions of power.
Punishment, which is the practice that most decisively fashioned the
human animal, can be characterized in the light of this. it has a “two-
fold” character. First, there is the side to punishment that exhibits “rela-
tive permanence.” this concerns the customary elements involved in
punishing, the ritual of the punishing act and the conventionally ob-
served order of succession that typifies it. in other words, there is the
aspect of punishment that is procedural. this procedural element is
what endures, relatively speaking, when compared to the second aspect,
which concerns the feelings of sense, purpose, and anticipation that ac-
company the ritual. this characteristic of punishment is best character-
ized by “fluidity” (Genealogy, ii, 13). the rituals that constitute punishment,
in other words, precede the meanings that we might be tempted to at-
tribute to it at any one time. the same goes for other practices.29 We
tend to make the error of thinking that the meaning and end of a thing
is what defines it. the sense we today tend to attribute to the punishing
act is, however, only something late and coincidental to it. the proce-
dures that characterize punishment were not, it follows, “invented for the
purpose of punishment” as the naïve moral and legal genealogist might
believe. the attribution of a sense to punishing is something that comes
much later: it does not pertain to a single sense, but a plurality of them.
indeed, the notion of punishment we cleave to today, Nietzsche now
concludes, is in fact a “synthesis” of various senses – which looks like a
unity simply because we have got to the point where the individual uses
and attributions of uses that have accrued around it are now so densely
woven together that they appear to possess a coherent unity. strip away
these uses and meanings, however, and one would be left with a nullity.
the concept of punishment is like an onion: it has lots of layers, but no
core. One cannot define it – as, indeed, one cannot define anything that
29 take the example of politeness. Being polite requires the observance of ritual, e.g.
knocking on the door before entering, shaking hands in greeting, etc. the “meaning” of
politeness is, however, a contingent matter. What one expects from it will depend upon
whether one is out on a first date, paying the bill at a restaurant, losing a game of golf to
one’s boss, challenging the witness in court, and so on.
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has a history, since that history will always be the concatenation of a

variety of uses to differing and sometimes unrelated and even conflict-
ing ends.
it follows that the purpose of punishment can never be given in abso-
lute terms. in considering punishment one always discovers a plurality of
purposes, the multiplicity of different senses that constitute its history. in
the past this would have been an easier issue to resolve, the “synthesis of
meanings” would have been simpler to disentangle. it is, even now, still
possible to see how the history of punishment is characterized by a range
of “elements,” whose syntheses “change valence” so that “now this, now
that element stands out and dominates, to the detriment of the others,
indeed, in some circumstances one element (for example, the purpose
of deterrence) seems to overcome all the rest” (Genealogy, ii, 13). the
point, however, is that what punishment signifies is always going to be an
“uncertain, belated and haphazard” matter so long as one thinks in mor-
al or teleological terms. One can at various points see a variety of pur-
poses at work, with one dominating at any given time, and Nietzsche
concludes his discussion with a long, but by no means exhaustive, list of
such possible purposes.30 What is notable, Nietzsche is telling us, is that
the confusing of punishment with justice is one of the typical errors that
the naïvely moral interpreter will make. Punishment is not intrinsically
linked to being just, since why one punishes is one of those questions
that will produce an at best obscure answer.
11. Punishing does not conform to a “moral” purpose – it does not make people
“better.” It is a tool of social utility. The real historical significance of punishment
concerns its role in transforming the nature of the creditor-debtor relationship and
hence the legal subject. As the communal creditor gains in wealth and power it
relaxes its hold on the miscreant because he or she is less of a threat. Powerful soci-
eties hence tend toward leniency in matters of justice. Power, which initially consti-
tutes the forces of equilibrium that determines the sphere of right, now tends to
conditions that outstrip the exchange logic underlying the law itself. Out of one
conception of justice another emerges that is antithetical to it, spurning equiva-
lence and vengeance in favour of generosity and mercy. Legal systems epitomize
this kind of generous power when they treat issues of right and wrong as rule-like
matters and thereby foster an impersonal ethos that protects the wrongdoer from
30 Punishment as deterrence, as a means of making harmless, as repayment to the vic-

tim, as a means of ensuring social stability, as inspiring the fear of those endowed with the
power to punish, as a means of weeding out those persons deemed unacceptable, as cele-
bration of power over the vanquished, as a means to assisting memory, as compromise, as
warfare against the one who threatens the peace of the social body.
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revenge. Genuine justice stays the vengeful hand of the victim and thereby tran-
scends the logic it emerges from. Taking such a view is an attitude characteristic of
the freethinker who resists the power of custom. Such free thought is creative in its
challenging of the norm. As such, it is, from the standpoint of conventional au-
thority, a form of criminality. What is needed, Nietzsche argues, is a new order of
legislation grounded in the non-conformist and “criminal” attitude characteristic
of the freethinker. The illusory nature of conformist conceptions of justice must be
exposed and, in turn, the kind of freedom necessary for the experimental attitude
of the freethinker demonstrated.
One thing is fairly certain, Nietzsche adds. Punishing people hardens

them (Genealogy, ii, 14). it does not make one “better” and is conse-
quently very unlikely to serve a “moral” end, although it certainly serves
to intensify the power of the intellect and refine the ability to master
one’s own desires. it is for this reason that one needs to look to the realm
of practices and the manner in which they function if one is to glean
anything useful about punishment. its significance, as has already been
noted, resides in the fact that punishing does not serve an exclusive
meaning or goal, but is rather a social function, an instrument that satis-
fies the utilitarian requirement that social order be secured from forces
that endanger it. such a functional instrument also shapes the self. the
most primitive community is erected on the creditor-debtor relation-
ship, a relationship in which the communal order itself stands as creditor
and the individual member of the community as debtor. For Nietzsche,
what is interesting about punishment is found in the developments and
refinements of this relationship as they occur in the context of the con-
ception of the legal subject. initially, the primitive creditor claims what is
their due according to the rules of calculation that stipulate what is the
“just” (i.e. equivalent) compensation for a wrong suffered. What is at
stake here is the feeling of power generated by the force of social hierar-
chy. the creditor gains pleasure from inflicting pain on the debtor and
the higher the latter stands in the hierarchy the greater the pleasure to
be derived from his or her misery. But as culture develops, things change.
credit takes what is due to it and increases in wealth. As it does so,
limitations come to be placed on the amount that can be demanded
of the debtor in virtue of the possession of that wealth (Genealogy, ii, 10).
the wealthier i am, the more damage i can withstand; and the greater
the damage i can withstand the less i am inclined to make of my enti-
tlement to recompense. Power, in other words, is a key determiner of
the extent to which punishment is the hallmark of the sphere of justice.
the more impoverished a community, the more it is inclined to punish
with harshness. the more powerful a community becomes the less the
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lawbreaker appears to represent a danger to the social whole and the

lesser its inclination to harshness. indeed, Nietzsche adds, the law even
begins to protect the wrongdoer from the wrath of the victim. Penal law
thus develops under the sway of the notion of equivalence, which holds
that wrongs can be compensated for, that “every offence … [is] some-
thing which can be paid off, so that, at least to a certain degree, the wrong-
doer is isolated from his deed.” Justice, in short, is liable in the end to take
the form of the generosity of the powerful. A powerful society, in other
words, will not demand of its wrongdoers that they are rigorously pun-
ished. it may be inclined even to go so far as embracing mercy as the
most appropriate response to the criminal.
With this claim Nietzsche returns us to the ethic of mercy already out-
lined in The Wanderer and His Shadow and Daybreak. One can imagine a
society “so conscious of its power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury
available to it, – that of letting its malefactors go unpunished … Justice,
which began by saying ‘everything can be paid off, everything must be
paid off,’ ends by turning a blind eye and letting those off unable to pay,
– it ends like every good thing of earth, by sublimating itself. the self-sub-
limation of justice: we know what a nice name it gives itself – mercy; it re-
mains, of course, the prerogative of the most powerful man, better still,
his way of being beyond the law” (Genealogy, ii, 10). Power, which is at
work from the outset in the constitution of the forces of equilibrium that
determine the spheres of rights and just treatment, sublimates the social
code of penal law into something that now outstrips the domain of the
law itself. Nietzsche thereby offers us a standpoint beyond the realm of
formal legality that spurns the vengeance that was hitherto enshrined in
it. the modern law court described in The Wanderer and His Shadow is a
sphere of revenge, a space of policing and misinterpretation in which
the criminal is held to account for his or her deeds according to a mythi-
cal standard of responsibility grounded in the error of free will. in con-
trast, in the Genealogy an ethic of mercy flows from a generosity possible
when one is in a state of empowerment sufficient to spurn vengeance.
understood in these terms, being just becomes something affirmative
(Genealogy, ii, 11).
two conceptions of justice thus emerge from Nietzsche’s texts that
span the period from Human, All Too Human to the Genealogy. One con-
ception of justice confines itself to the realm of tradition, to the securing
of repayment for a wrong, and comes to cleave to a metaphysics of free
will that sanctions vengeance. the other conception turns its back on
this logic even as it emerges from it. “Justice,” properly speaking, means
for Nietzsche precisely not punishing the wrongdoer. Given the degree to
which revenge has shaped human psychology and culture anyone who
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ceases to view the world in a manner dominated by the feeling that they
are the victim of a personal injury of some kind (especially if they hap-
pen to be such a victim) would represent “a piece of perfection, the
highest form of mastery to be had on earth, – and even something which
we would be wise not to expect and should certainly find difficult to be-
lieve” (Genealogy, ii, 11). Legal systems, Nietzsche now argues, can thus
be read as manifestations of this kind of power, as the attempt by those
most powerful in a social milieu to circumvent the spirit of revenge that
permeates it. When a legal system is set up that treats a wrong in terms of
rules, it cultivates an impersonal ethos that resists the temptation to view
the wrongdoer through the eyes of the injured party:
everywhere that justice is practised and maintained, the stronger

power can be seen looking for means of putting an end to the
senseless ravages of ressentiment amongst those inferior to it …. the
most decisive thing … that the higher authorities can invent and
enforce against the even stronger power of hostile and spiteful
feelings – and they do it as soon as they are strong enough – is the
setting up of a legal system, the imperative declaration of what
counts as permissible in their eyes, as just, and what counts as for-
bidden, unjust: once the legal code is in place, by treating offence
and arbitrary actions against the individual or groups as a crime, as
violation of the law, as insurrection against the higher authorities
themselves, they distract attention from the damage done by such
violations, and ultimately achieve the opposite of what revenge sets
out to do, which just sees and regards as valid the injured party’s
point of view –: from then on the eye is trained for an ever more
impersonal interpretation of the action … therefore “just” and “un-
just” only start from the moment when a legal system is set up …
to talk of “just” and “unjust” as such is meaningless, an act of inju-
ry, violence, exploitation or destruction cannot be “unjust” as such,
because life functions essentially in an injurious, violent, exploit-
ative and destructive manner, or these are at least its fundamental
processes and it cannot be thought of without these characteristics.
(Genealogy, ii, 11)
One should compare this view with the kind of “justice” that Nietzsche
has already lambasted in Human, All Too Human, The Wanderer and His
Shadow, and Daybreak as typifying the law courts of his own times. the
“so-called justice that punishes and rewards” (Human, All Too Human,
105), is now exemplified by the anti-semitic philosopher eugen Dühring,
who advocates the view that justice originates in the feeling of having
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suffered a wrong (Genealogy, ii, 11). to believe this is to regress to the

most primitive of faiths in which the notions of equivalence and ex-
change take the ontological status of absolutes. the one who does not
conform, the “evil” human being, is by way of this made into the devil
personified, an object of hatred and spiteful revenge. Against this con-
ception, Nietzsche argues for a justice that demythologizes the wrong-
doer and so mitigates spite, diverting resentful feelings away from the
miscreant. there is no such thing, this section of the Genealogy avers, as
“justice-in-itself.” there is no natural law, no initial violation or originary
guilt that can occur outside the bounds of a formally articulated legal
framework. this conception of law takes justice to be a positive force
when properly understood, for it functions to shield the object of resent-
ful hatred from the full force of the victim’s spite and ultimately aban-
dons the right to extract compensation in any form. to be “just,” here,
means to produce a situation in which there is an equilibrium of forces
rather than to bring about the extirpation of so-called “undesirable”
forces with a view to the enforcement of a fixed moral order. true jus-
tice, in so far as it has existed on earth, refuses to the wronged a free
hand with regard to the fate of the wrongdoer.
Nietzsche’s advocacy in the Genealogy of the view that justice must go
beyond itself, overturning the very logic of equivalence that grounds it,
represents a development connected to the idea of the role of the free-
thinker outlined in Daybreak. the freethinker thinks against norms and
the power of custom and in so doing seeks to overthrow them. such a
one who acts in this way is for Nietzsche historically important, for they
are the ones who create new norms and customs, the makers of values.
creators of this kind are characterized in a manner that is telling: “One
has to take back much of the defamation which people have cast upon
those who broke through the spell of custom by means of a deed – in
general, they are called criminals. Whoever has overthrown an existing
law of custom [Sittengesetz] has hitherto always been accounted a bad
man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstat-
ed, the predicate gradually changed; – history treats almost exclusively of
these bad men who became good men!” (Daybreak, 20) the mark of “crimi-
nal,” then, is something that anyone forced to think against the norm
has been destined to bear. the historian of morals who does not appreci-
ate the symptomatic nature of values and meanings fails to see this. every
value is a symptom of something having triumphed over something else,
every sense a sign that the miscreant-turned-victor who has successfully
overstepped the boundaries delineated by custom and the sacred has
spontaneously refashioned the significance of the practices and customs
that mark the space of the sacred in their own image. “the form is fluid,
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the ‘meaning’ [Sinn] even more so” (Genealogy, ii, 12). the sanctioning
of law as the embodiment of the dominance of custom and authority
over the individual must be abandoned. the nature of the criminal must
be rethought. imagine, says Nietzsche, a world in which the criminal
calls himself to account and determines his own punishment “in the
proud feeling that he is thus honouring the law that he himself has
made, that by punishing himself he is exercising his power, the power of
the lawgiver” (Daybreak, 187). A situation like this presupposes a new
order of legislation “founded on the idea ‘i submit only to the law which
i myself have given, in great things and small.’ there are so many ex-
periments to make! there are so many futures still to dawn!” (ibid.). two
conditions must be fulfilled if this vision is to be articulated satisfactorily.
the first is that the bogus nature of all who claim to be the embodiment
of universal goodness and justice be made evident. the second requires
that the possibility of the kind of freedom necessary for such experimen-
tal living be made manifest. What must be formulated is a vision of the
law-giving animal.
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5
The Law-Giving Animal
1. For a consideration of Nietzsche’s views on “the good and the just” one can turn
to thus spoke zarathustra, a work that challenges not only accepted concep-
tions of morality but also conventional understandings of the genre of philosophi-
cal discourse. As such, zarathustra is best read in conjunction with the work that
follows it, Beyond Good and evil, a text that also makes explicit Nietzsche’s
challenge to the conventions of philosophical thought. zarathustra opens with the
giving of a gift of wisdom. It is a dangerous gift (a gift of “fire”), because its ac-
ceptance entails rejecting the rule of norm and custom in one’s life. This gift is the
gift of the vision of the overman. The overman symbolizes a demand to rethink
human identity, captured early in the text by the metaphor of a figure passing on
a rope over an abyss. Humankind, Zarathustra holds, is a creature part cultured,
part beast. The beast in us must be overcome. Such a path involves overcoming the
merely conventional aspect of human life present in oneself in pursuit of an excel-
lence summed up by the notion of individual sovereignty. This sovereignty comes
with the demise of universalism. Its aim is the redemption of past human suffer-
ing. This vision of redemption, however, is naturalistic. It offers no “otherworldly”
comforts, it denies the universal, rebuts metaphysics, and embraces the earth and
history. This vision is contrasted with its antithesis: the nightmare vision of the
“last man,” a being who craves nothing more in life than bland contentment.
Nietzsche’s views on “the good and the just” are articulated clearly
enough by his anti-prophet, zarathustra. this semi-mythical figure – the
original zoroaster, credited by Nietzsche with the invention of morality
and because of this given the privilege of bearing witness to its disso-
lution – enacts, sometimes in parody, the demythologization and self-
overcoming of morality. the four parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, written
between 1883 and 1885, form a text that begs to be read in a manner
akin to the way in which one approaches a piece of music. there is an
initial stage at which one neither wants nor needs critical overviews. Just
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The Law-Giving Animal 147
as the experience of a symphony benefits from minimal information

(the name of the composer and their dates of birth and death form a
sufficient context) so with Zarathustra one is initially reduced to silence.
One is driven to let the text speak first. One can ask questions after, if
one wishes. Just as a piece of music can be, so Zarathustra is a gift. it is
neither “pure philosophy” (whatever that is) nor novel (“pure” fiction).
it is neither treatise nor critique, nor manifesto, nor rule book. the text
of Zarathustra lives in the gaps that open up in one’s uncritically ac-
cepted understanding of the boundaries separating genres. As befits
something that slips between the boundaries of generic definition, it is,
as the dedication announces, a book “for all and none.” Zarathustra is a
text for anybody and nobody, which means that it is somewhat like a let-
ter forever condemned to being delivered to the wrong address. With
such a letter, if, when you open it, you think it is specifically for you, then
you are without doubt not the intended addressee. One must be a wary
reader in this regard. Lawrence Lampert is surely right to see in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra the summation of Nietzsche’s philosophy,1 but it is a
deliberately frustrating summation if you are the sort of reader who
wants to slice off an easily digestible morsel of something that sum-
marizes the supposed whole that some dare to label with the phrase
“Nietzsche’s thought.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a combination of interludes, journeys, and
repetitions.2 it opens, fittingly enough, as a journey begins (Zarathustra,
i, “zarathustra’s Prologue,” 1). zarathustra, a solitary being living in self-
imposed mountain exile, decides the time has come to return to the
realm of human society. he has, he announces, a gift to give to humanity:
1 see Lampert, Nietzsche’s Teaching.

2 For an exemplary discussion of the structure of Thus Spoke Zarathustra see Loeb, The
Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Loeb argues that the text itself is bound up with Nietzsche’s
conception of eternal recurrence in its narrative structure. zarathustra’s life, in other
words, is itself an enactment of eternal recurrence. Loeb’s self-avowedly “literary” approach
to interpreting Nietzsche is one i have much sympathy with. such an approach means that
one does not begin thinking about Nietzsche (or anything else, for that matter) by first
defining one’s concepts. the possibility of such a definition is fantasy – what concepts sig-
nify is determined by their role within a web of cultural practices, as Nietzsche compel-
lingly reveals in his discussion of them in the Genealogy (see chapter 4). the predominance
of practice in Nietzsche’s writings, which is explored here especially in chapters 3 and 4,
might also be well characterized as epitomizing the necessary “literary” element in all ac-
tion (a term which also includes “thought”). this is why a “pure philosophy” (that is, a
philosophy which is not always already something else, not always already entangled in
something else – in politics, culture, history) is an impossible and dangerous fantasy. that
Nietzsche is not himself immune to the temptations of such a fantasy is a thought that lies
behind my discussion of revaluation and The Antichrist in the final chapter of this book.
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the “cup” of his soul overflows and he feels driven to share the riches
held within it. the text thus begins with an affirmation of the act of be-
stowal: “i bring men a gift” (Zarathustra, “zarathustra’s Prologue,” 2).
this is a gift of wisdom, and it truly is a gift, for zarathustra wants noth-
ing in return for it. A short exchange on the way down the mountain
with a hermit who recalls zarathustra’s ascent into solitude reveals the
source of the gift: zarathustra has undergone a transformation fash-
ioned by solitude and he has become full. the gift is announced on the
wave of an oscillation that marks out its origin as residing in an indeter-
minate temporal space opened up between coming and going. it does
not have an origin in the sense of being something authored. the gift,
rather, springs forth from a taking leave born of despair and is an-
nounced only in its bearer’s triumphant return. zarathustra’s triumph
here is a kind of danger. his is a gift that must look to some like a mes-
sage of searing devastation fashioned from the hot embers of burnt-out
remains: “At that time you carried your ashes to the mountains; would
you now carry your fire into the valleys? Do you not fear to be punished
as an arsonist?” the symbolism is clear enough: zarathustra is an invert-
er of the order of things. Where fire consumes itself and finishes in ashes
and dust, zarathustra conjures fire from smoking remnants. zarathustra,
an outsider, a foreigner alien to the regulated realm of social order, bears
within his wisdom something incendiary. his gift brings with it the dan-
ger that it will inflame others and in doing so provoke the counter reac-
tion of the dominant forces of conformist social order, an order all too
keen to indulge in punishment and look for “justifications” afterwards
for doing so.
zarathustra’s gift is the post-humanist vision of the “overman”: “I teach
you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have
you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something
beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood
and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? (Zarathustra,
i, “zarathustra’s Prologue”, 3). We are almost at once offered a speech
invoking the vision of a humanity that is capable of surpassing itself.
What is needed, zarathustra says, is a rethinking of what it means to be
human. this forms the basis of what zarathustra calls his love of human-
ity. such love is the love of the potential humankind has to transcend its
purportedly “given” nature:
Man is a rope tied between beast and overman – a rope over an

abyss … What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end:
what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.
i love those who do not know how to live, except by going under,
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for they are those who cross over … i love those … who sacrifice
themselves for the earth, that the earth may some day become the
overman’s. i love him who lives to know, and who wants to know
so that the overman may live some day. And thus he wants to go
under. i love him who works and invents to build a house for the
overman and to prepare earth, animal, and plant for him … i love
him who justifies future and redeems past generations: for he
wants to perish of the present. (Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s
Prologue,” 4)
Only a person who becomes a willing means of humanity “crossing over”

from the customary and compliant existence that characterizes the aver-
age mode of existence in society to a new, experimental mode of life is
worthy of zarathustra’s love. such a person wills their own down-going
and with it the down-going of humanity in pursuit of the vision of new
conceptions of excellence. in turn, zarathustra envisions fashioning the
earth into something replete with the cultivated resources of nature that
the overman, a being of supra-human futurity, will need.
the overman is, of course, a kind of metaphor for human potential.
he is a representation of the most gloriously selfish creator-spirit, allied
to what Nietzsche elsewhere refers to as the “Dionysian” man.3 the over-
man exemplifies the self-possession, autonomy, and uniqueness of a kind
of sovereign individuality, one resistant to a modernity dominated by the
impersonal forces of mass production and consumption. the overman is
a being of hitherto un-thought potential for freedom, for his freedom is
the freedom characteristic of the creation of values. this is a freedom
that marks the death of universal morality: “he … has discovered himself
who says, ‘this is my good and evil’; with that he has reduced to silence
the mole and dwarf who say, ‘Good for all, evil for all’ … ‘this is my way;
where is yours?’ – thus i answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ For the
way – that does not exist” (Zarathustra, iii, “On the spirit of Gravity,” 2).
humankind must be something that is passed through if the overman is
to be attained. in this way, the collective and unimaginably vast suffering
of self-inflicted punishment and self-torture that characterizes human
history is open to being redeemed. the fragments that now make up the
realm of human existence can then be fashioned into a new unity: all
that is “fragment and riddle and dreadful accident” in humankind can,
through the vision of the overman, be reassembled into something that
enables the realization of humanity’s potential for excellence: “to
3 see Twilight of the Idols, “‘Reason’ in Philosophy,” 6.
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redeem what is past in man and to re-create all ‘it was’ until the will says,
‘thus i willed it! thus shall i will it – this i called redemption and this
alone i taught them to call redemption’ (Zarathustra, iii, “On Old and
New tablets,” 3). in this way, the past is rendered something that may
be justified and redeemed by way of the overman. such redemption is,
however, naturalistic. it requires no “afterworldly” illusions in order to
be communicated, it offers nothing comfortingly universal – it does not
smack of metaphysics.
the vision of the “last man” that zarathustra elucidates by way of a
contrast to the overman offers a good means of understanding the vi-
sion. the idea of the overman inspires in zarathustra thoughts of a sub-
lime autonomy, a self-possession that expends itself in the individuality
of creative expression. the last man, in contrast, is a creature of self-
obsessed sterility. zarathustra’s de-humanizing description is supposed
to provoke revulsion. We are presented with a creature as pestilent as the
“flea-beetle,” rubbing itself up against its neighbour in a search for com-
fort and warmth; a being devoid of any understanding of great love, cre-
ation, longing, or striving. the last man lacks even self-contempt. For
him, all that matters is the prospect of a comfortable life and the stultify-
ing happiness characteristic of one who uncritically embraces the norm:
“‘We have invented happiness,’ say the last men and they blink … One
still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the
entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich:
both require too much exertion” (Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s Prologue,”
5). the last man typifies the dominant desire for easy living that moti-
vates modern mass culture and characterizes communal existence gen-
erally. his is a world of short-lived, trivial mass entertainment and
uncreative self-indulgence. the last man is, in short, too forgiving of
himself in contrast to the self-critical hardness of those who would be a
pathway to forms of living beyond the norm.
2. The overman does not represent a form of ultimate obligation or compulsion. It

is an invitation that commends to us a goal. It does so in the language of natu-
ralistic historical philosophy. This approach embraces the body as the locus of hu-
man identity and rejects the belief in autonomous spirituality, i.e. the “immortal
soul” concept. The latter belief is characteristic of the world view of the “last man,”
for it is symptomatic of a retreat from the traumas of life into a “better” realm be-
yond pain and suffering. The attack on the soul in zarathustra is an attack on
the metaphysical conception of free will, and hence the moralistic justification of
punishment that characterizes our dominant sense of morality. The affirmation of
the soul concept is equivalent for Nietzsche to the affirmation of the soul, our con-
sciousness, as something superior to the body. With this, thought trumps the realm
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of feeling and materiality. The belief in the soul testifies to the fact that humanity
is alienated from itself. In the development of human culture, becoming conscious
was accompanied by a necessary degree of pain. The body, in turn, came to be deni-
grated as a source of suffering. The consequence of this is that we are inclined to
delusion: we are subject to the soul’s moralistic urge to denigrate embodiment and
hence to self-hatred. Against this, Zarathustra asserts the priority of the body and
its legitimate authority over the soul concept.
zarathustra may be one who seeks to take his fire to the valleys, but his
first attempt at doing so reveals that in the wrong conditions an incendi-
ary can be a damp squib. he announces to people gathered in a market
place (to the masses) the overcoming of humanity and the coming of
the overman (Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s Prologue,” 3). their response
is (quite understandably, one is inclined to say) epitomized by a combi-
nation of ignorance and mockery. he cannot oblige them to listen. the
gift that zarathustra bears, it turns out, is akin to an invitation (the invi-
tation of the overman), and one can always turn down invitations. A
passage from Daybreak provides a clue to what happens here in the text:
“Only if mankind possessed a universally recognized goal would it pos-
sible to propose ‘thus and thus is the right course of action’: for the
present there exists no such goal. it is thus irrational and trivial to im-
pose the demands of morality upon mankind. – to recommend a goal to
mankind is something quite different: the goal is then thought of as
something that lies in our own discretion; supposing the recommendation
appealed to mankind it could in pursuit of it also impose upon itself a
moral law, likewise at its own discretion” (Daybreak, 108). in other words,
it is unwarranted and unrealistic to seek to impose upon human exis-
tence any universal moral imperative. commending us to endorse an
idea of what the future could be is, however, somewhat different. if a
vision appeals we can choose to endorse that vision and adopt it as our
own. zarathustra’s commendation of the overman is to be taken in just
this manner. it cannot be imposed by way of some superior power and
remain what it proclaims itself to be. Only as an invitation does it retain
its integrity as a teaching and as a gift.
zarathustra’s invitation speaks in the idiom of the anti-metaphysical
naturalism Nietzsche first outlines in Human, All Too Human. We are
asked to reconsider the meaning of our virtues through affirming natu-
ralism, that is, through embracing the body. the majority of people,
zarathustra proclaims, believe unquestioningly in the autonomy of the
soul; but such belief epitomizes metaphysical prejudice. to cleave to
this belief means to look down on the body in order to glorify the soul.
in such glorification zarathustra sees the source of an illusory sense of
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detachment and self-determination that cultivates the un-ambitious con-

tentment and peaceful resignation characteristic of the last man. in so
far as it signifies the ideal of a thing untrammelled by the body, of an
entity separated from the taint of history and becoming, the soul con-
cept stands as a symptom of revulsion against embodied life. When one
affirms the “soul,” or pure thought, one affirms a realm that lies beyond
the challenge and pain that are essential characteristics of existence.
Life, in short, is a trauma, and one must face it for what it is. the soul
concept signifies the refusal to do this. it is symptomatic of the desire to
seek refuge from the traumas of life in a sense of selfhood that is im-
mune to being stretched, scratched, sliced, maimed, tortured, and killed,
as the body can be.
When he speaks of the “soul,” zarathustra’s target is faith in the au-
tonomous free will, the belief that, as we have seen, Nietzsche identifies
as underlying the moralistic justification of punishment.4 When we af-
firm the soul a part of us speaks and makes itself heard, but it is the weak-
est part – our consciousness, that part of us that does little more than
bear witness to the greater strivings and struggles of the embodied self.5
the affirmer of the soul asks, thereby, that the weaker be allowed to
judge the stronger, that “pure thought” be the judge of “mere material-
ity” and that the body subordinate itself to the hegemony of the concept.
For Nietzsche, this is akin to an illness; it is as if a part and function of
the whole has sought to usurp it.6 in reality, the soul is not fit to sit in
judgement over the body, for it is a creation dependent entirely on the
body. Another way of putting this would be to say that we are creatures
divided against ourselves, and that the soul concept bears unconscious
witness to the pain that this division engenders (see Genealogy, iii, 13ff).
culture, which subordinates the drives to norms, is attained at the cost
4 see chapter 4.
5 see Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i, “Of the Despisers of the Body.” here zarathustra draws
the distinction between the self and the “i.” the self is the body, a hierarchy of command
dominated by a “great reason [eine grosse Vernunft]”: “the self says to the i ‘feel pain here!’
then it suffers and thinks how it might suffer no more – and that is why it is made to think.
the self says to the i ‘Feel delight here!’ then it is delighted and thinks how it might often
delight again – and that is why it is made to think.” the “i” is thus a function of the com-
manding self, forced into thought it is subject to the self’s overwhelming authority – an
authority derived from the body’s having “more reason” in it than is contained in the most
profound wisdom consciousness has to offer. the “i” is thus a subject of the sovereign. it is
that aspect of the self that bears witness to the historical unfolding of its life.
6 see Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i, “Of the Despisers of the Body.” As it bears witness the
self-reflexive “i” interprets the life of the self, but in doing so it comes to mistake this inter-
pretation and thereby takes itself to be the sole cause of embodied action.
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of a creature whose identity is problematic. Norms act on the body to

tame it, to render the brute animal a being that will conform (Genealogy,
ii, 2ff). humanity thereby emerges as a self-interpreter and creature of
will only at the cost of being alienated from its own embodied condition:
it punishes itself into regularization and in doing so experiences itself
foremost as pain. Becoming conscious means first becoming conscious
of pain and this pain is inevitably experienced as something uncannily
other, as a body in pain, one that in acceding to the dictates of webs of
communal customary evaluation opens itself to suffering from the prac-
tices of punishing that are exerted upon it simply in virtue of its being a
creature of society. When norms forbid, they forbid the tendency of the
embodied drives to assert themselves (the tendency to anti-social behav-
iour) and when customs punish they punish the body, which is in this
way open to being both taken as the cause of guilt and made an object
of socially constructed contempt. this, for Nietzsche, underlies the hu-
man tendency to denigrate the body. Because of the necessary power
of social conformity, we have an inclination to mistake the embodied
source of our pain for the origin of our feelings of guilt, when such feel-
ings are in fact merely symptoms of the power that custom energizes
over the body as a condition of social life. in short, one of our dominant
tendencies is the tendency to moralization.
the soul’s resultant moralistic attempts to denigrate and thereby sub-
jugate and submerge the embodied condition of its own existence give
rise to something at once attenuated and ugly in its propensity for idle
satisfaction. the soul hates its own embodied condition: “Once the soul
looked contemptuously upon the body, and then this contempt was the
highest: she wanted the body meagre, ghastly, and starved. thus she
hoped to escape it and the earth … But you, too, my brothers, tell me:
what does your body proclaim of your soul? is not your soul poverty
and filth and wretched contentment?” (Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s
Prologue,” 3). the worship of the soul concept means denigrating the
body and rendering it something starved and weak. here lie the roots of
asceticism. it is the soul, however, that is worthy of vilification, not the
body. Where the body is traditionally considered a thing of pollution in
opposition to the soul’s purity (of processes, hunger, ingestion, diges-
tion, excretion, desire, embarrassment, and pain) zarathustra inverts
the hierarchy. the body is pure. What is polluting are the soul’s meta-
physical attempts to denigrate what is in reality the embodied condition
of its own existence; its desire to stand as a judge over something with
regard to which it has no right to judge, as if the notion of “pure intel-
lect” were anything more than a chimera. the body is the legitimate
judge of the soul’s propensities, not the other way round. taken this way,
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the soul concept is found to be something wanting and corrupting, even

as it is nevertheless necessary in view of the conditions under which hu-
man culture emerged. if, as Nietzsche argues from Human, All Too
Human onwards, we are creatures who are unjust to our experiences, it
turns out that this injustice is perpetrated most against the embodied
condition that makes us who we are. the soul concept must be placed
on trial.
3. The teaching of the overman is the teaching of the negation of both the soul
myth and the myth of a free, autonomous will. Zarathustra urges us to attain the
“great contempt” as a path to overcoming such beliefs. In this state, one recoils
from that which hitherto has been valued and given happiness. One undergoes
nihilism. This affords a glimpse of a realm of possible meaning that lies beyond
conventional judgement. What is needed, Zarathustra tells an audience of listen-
ers in a market place, is a new justification for living, a new mode of being. His
audience, a crowd of instinctive humanists inclined to view themselves as the
centre and purpose of things, greet him with laughter and incomprehension. The
everyday world of human concerns does not condone Zarathustra’s urging of a
humanity that embarks upon ever more ambitious and experimental ways of life.
For Nietzsche, however, such a vision is needed to steer us away from nihilism.
This vision is promulgated by a reinterpretation of the law-like propensities that
have made humankind what it is. A new sense of justice is needed. One must,
Zarathustra holds, spurn accepted attitudes toward duty, self-respect, right, and
status and reformulate them. From the standpoint of “the good and the just”
Zarathustra’s teaching looks like criminality. If he is to gain true listeners and
followers, he notes, he must become a “robber,” since he must wrestle them from a
social realm dominated by conformity and unwilling to part with them. The “great
contempt” is the first stage along the path redeeming the body and hence the self.
the teaching of the overcoming of humanity requires that we disabuse

ourselves of the soul myth, the metaphysical belief in an autonomous
faculty of free choice, of a power of consciousness immune to embodied
constraints. to free oneself of the soul in this way means to overcome the
sense of responsibility and guilt associated with it. For this, zarathustra
argues, the “great contempt” is needed, the moment in which one feels
revulsion even toward that which has endowed one with one’s greatest
happiness. One must go through a moment of nihilism. What seemed to
be of the highest value must now seem to be not merely worthless but
repulsive. the great contempt is: “the hour when you say, ‘What matters
my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his food? it is poverty and
filth and wretched contentment.’ the hour when you say, ‘What matters
my virtue? As yet it has not made me rage. how weary i am of my good
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and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.’ the
hour when you say, ‘What matters my justice? i do not see that i am
flames and fuel. But the just are flames and fuel.’ the hour when you say,
‘What matters my pity? is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who
loves man? But my pity is no crucifixion.’ have you yet spoken thus?”
(Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s Prologue,” 3) Great questioning requires
extravagance. it requires that one goes beyond the domain of the aver-
age everyday world of evaluations, the realm in which the invocation of
the purportedly highest ideals and gods evidences nothing more than
the ability to live communally, un-ambitiously, and peacefully, to do no
more than take care over one’s daily out-goings and in-goings, to accede
to the norm without a thought. What is needed, zarathustra holds, is a
new “justification,” a new way of endowing life with significance that can
be encapsulated by the extravagant demand that says “my happiness
ought to justify existence itself.” Reason, virtue, justice, pity, ethical and
political life: all must be reconsidered in the light of this demand.
it is perhaps not surprising that in the face of this onslaught on their
everyday world those standing before zarathustra when he makes this
speech laugh at him. the fact is, he ruminates, that they do not compre-
hend that the term “humanity” denotes nothing more than an interme-
diate state of being (Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s Prologue,” 4). they do
not realize that the existence of humanity taken as it is remains a mystery,
something senseless and weird, unless something can be provided that
will come to embrace it through allowing it to embrace itself (ibid., 7).
People have a tendency to think of themselves humanistically, i.e. in a
manner that is essentially passive, as an end, as a kind of conclusion to
the nature of things, as if all that has been was simply following a pre-
ordained path pointing inexorably toward them as its pinnacle. to be
human is for zarathustra, however, to be a prelude. For zarathustra,
humankind is worthy in so far as it can be an overture to more ambitious
experiments in living. experiments such as that which the notion of the
overman exemplifies will be capable of justifying the past not because
they just happen to have sprung from it. Justification, for Nietzsche, is
not passive. they will do so because they can turn on the past and, in an
act of self-legislative affirmation, inscribe a sense upon it that makes
manifest an act of creative will. Justification of the kind Nietzsche urges
here is something that is not found but made and it is through its being
made that it redeems humanity from the absurdity of a merely passive
sense of being what it is. such making requires rethinking the signifi-
cance of our law-like propensities and it requires a new sense of justice
that springs out of the older one and in doing so goes beyond it, just as
a butterfly emerges from its cocoon and thereby transcends it.
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to teach this, as zarathustra does, is to risk the ire of “the good and
the just” (Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s Prologue,” 8). to emphasize the
uncanny alienated condition that haunts the web of everyday human
concerns is to place a question mark over the legitimacy of those con-
cerns. One who does so must always be perceived as “the danger of the
multitude” – as a challenger of accepted notions concerning the nature
of justice itself. No surprise, then, that zarathustra turns elsewhere, that
he feels impelled to offer his teaching only to those willing to follow him
to the margins of social acceptability “because they want to follow them-
selves” (ibid., 9). zarathustra’s wisdom now becomes something that
must be communicated through acts that combine a sense of seduction
and theft. he must poach from society such individuals as are suited, and
hence willing, to hear his teaching. he must become outlandish, a law-
breaker, he must appear as one who rejects the norms that govern the
social realm since he seeks to steal from its number: “the people shall be
angry with me: zarathustra wants to be called a robber by the shepherds.”
the so-called “shepherds” are none other than “the good and the just.”
these are the haters of the person who challenges the authority of the
rules that characterize the hegemony of social conformity. to challenge
such conformity means to be deemed a criminal: “Behold the good and
the just! Whom do they hate most? the man who breaks their tables of
values, the breaker, the lawbreaker; but this is the creator [der Schaffende]”
(Zarathustra, i, “zarathustra’s Prologue,” 9). creation, that is the cre-
ation of values, always requires an act of destruction. to be a destroyer
of values and to be a creator of values are two sides of the same coin, for
one cannot create new ways of living, new legislations concerning life,7
without threatening the old. creativity, when understood from the
standpoint represented by the norms that ensure the smooth operation
of social order, is a form of criminality. this is because creativity shatters
the faith in the norm, in the rule of custom and tradition, in what is
unquestioningly accepted as demarcating the domain of the “good.”
the same goes for all people with faith in conformity. they hate the
creator, the person who overturns established values as a necessary pre-
lude to creating new ones. One should note thereby that the “great con-
tempt” zarathustra urges is not so much a state of self-hatred but the
condition of suffering from what one is because of what one has valued
hitherto. One can explore it further by entering with zarathustra into a
court of law and witnessing an instructive illustration of a moment of
“great contempt.”
7 Das Schaffen is legislating, producing; schaffen, to accomplish, to bring off, to create.
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4. Zarathustra explores the notion of the “great contempt” further. We are placed
in a court. A “pale criminal” is on trial. The court demands from the criminal
that he acquiesce to the guilty verdict, that he undergoes the “great contempt” and
feels revulsion and self-hatred at the mere thought of himself. Proper judgment of
such a person must refrain from moral censure. Have not the judges themselves,
Zarathustra asks, done in thought what the criminal before has done in deed?
Responsibility for violence must not be placed solely at the miscreant’s door. What
sickens the criminal and propels them into blood-lust is the cultural milieu they
inhabit. The criminal, a blend of drives and social conditioning peculiar to the
vicissitudes of time and place, suffers from the fatality of simply being who he is.
In other times his now unruly drives could have been put to good use. The past is
replete with victims of this sort. Once the doubter experienced a similar self-loathing
and sense of their own criminality because of this tendency and was made sick by
being deemed a heretic and witch. Self-understanding is always already mediated
by the dominant norms in a social order: the naming of characteristics as “evil”
gives rise to the self-hatred of the person unfortunate enough to have these charac-
teristics. No one is born “evil,” they are made it. In the space of the law court this
thought is unthinkable: the judge must affirm the normative structure of the social
world they inhabit in order to fulfil their function as judge. So-called virtues, how-
ever, are in reality instrumental calculations designed to ensure the power of the
norm, social stability, and a life of ease. They represent the justice of the “last
man,” a merely habitual and unthinking endorsement of the conditions that foster
comfortable, collective existence. Such conditions may have been essential in fash-
ioning humanity, but that is no reason to adhere to them. The law of custom, of
habitual justice, must be rejected. Such a rejection is akin to the rejection of custom
represented by the modern state, but must not be confused with it.
“On the Pale criminal,” in the first part of Zarathustra, transports the
reader into a courtroom. the court is elucidated as a space that re-enacts
the ancient ritual of primitive sacrifice. Who, however, is the judge and
who the judged in the narrative zarathustra offers here? the “judges
and sacrificers” of the law court are in session before a condemned man.
they do not want to kill, however, until the “animal” has nodded, until
he has lowered his head in submissive agreement with the sentence pro-
nounced upon him. in other words, the judges need a specific kind of
justification to reside in their sentencing of the criminal. it must be one
that comes from the criminal himself. the judges need the criminal’s
participation: he needs to offer some kind of assent concerning the pro-
cess in which he is immersed and whereby he is judged, albeit if only
through an act of silent, submissive agreement. the pale criminal nods;
as he does so his eyes speak “the great contempt.” the object of the
criminal’s “great contempt” is the interpretation that his consciousness,
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as a bearing witness to who he is, offers up concerning his own identity,

his understanding of himself, the moment of self-interpretation that
says “i”: “‘My i [Ich] is something that shall be overcome: my i is to me
the great contempt of man’: that is what his eyes say.” this is the crimi-
nal’s moment of self-judgement, the point at which the self-awareness
generated by the gaze of the court turns him against himself in disgust.
contempt marks the moment at which the pale criminal becomes more
than he has been hitherto: he is a being who now suffers from himself,
who stands as his own judge. in so far as the criminal at this moment
judges and condemns himself he offers a glimpse of the human poten-
tial for self-overcoming: “that he judged himself, that was his highest
moment; do not let the sublime return to his baseness!” suffering and
self-contempt is the sign that something more is possible for this pale,
bleached-out being: that there is available to him some form of dignity.
Perhaps the only redemption from deep suffering of this kind is
“a quick death,” zarathustra suggests. the judges who sentence to kill
should only do so, however, in the right spirit. Let them condemn as an
act of kindness, not as an expression of revenge. “‘enemy,’ you shall say,
but not ‘villain’; ‘sick’ you shall say, but not ‘scoundrel’; ‘fool’ you shall
say, but not ‘sinner.’” Moral censure, in short, is not the proper business
of the just decision. After all, zarathustra asks, can the “scarlet judge,”
resplendent in the gowns of his office, ultimately hold himself to be any
better than the person over whom he sits in judgement? Few of us are
innocent when it comes to indulgence in the violence of fantasy. if, says
zarathustra, the judge were to confess what he had “already done in
thought” we would experience revulsion normally reserved for the crimi-
nal. it is, of course, one thing to think something and another to act it
– even if the difference in question is only one of degree rather than
difference in kind. the question, however, concerns the extent to which
one owns up to one’s deeds or thoughts. the pale criminal is pale, emp-
tied of the vigour of life, because he has been destroyed in a specific way:
“An image made this pale man pale. he was equal to his deed when he
did it; but he could not bear its image after it was done. Now he always
saw himself as the doer of one deed. Madness i call this: the exception
has now become the essence for him. A chalk streak stops a hen; the
stroke that he himself struck stopped his poor reason: madness after the
deed i call this” (Zarathustra, i, “On the Pale criminal”). What the judges
in the law court do not know, says zarathustra, is that there is a deeper
form of madness that precedes the deed. they simplistically attribute the
criminal’s evil act to the desire to steal. in reality, he was a victim of
bloodlust: “he thirsted after the joy of the knife!” the act of robbery that
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accompanies the criminal’s killing of his victim is a cloak: it allows him to

conceal from himself the true of nature of the desire for blood that
spurred him on to kill. Posing the question as to what it is that underlies
the pale criminal’s lust for blood means, for zarathustra, turning to the
issue of the relation between the drives, the criminal, and the social
world he inhabits. the clue as to the true nature of the criminal’s vio-
lence resides here:
What is this man? A heap of diseases, which, through his spirit,

reach out into the world: there they want to catch their prey. What
is this man? A ball of wild snakes, which rarely enjoy rest from each
other: so they go forth singly and seek prey in the world. Behold
this poor body! What it suffered and coveted this poor soul inter-
preted for itself: it interpreted it as murderous lust and greed for
the bliss of the knife. those who become sick today are overcome
by that evil which is evil today: they want to hurt with that which
hurts them. But there have been other ages and another evil and
good. Once doubt was evil and the will to self. then the sick be-
came heretics and witches: as heretics and witches they suffered
and wanted to inflict suffering. (ibid.)
here one is presented with another exemplary instance of Nietzsche’s

naturalistic historicism. Who is this person? he is an entwinement of
“serpents,” of dark and contrary drives that seek to express themselves
and, in doing so, turn one after the other back on the environment that
he inhabits. however, it is as refractions of this environment that these
drives themselves are endowed with significance. the man’s poverty-
stricken body presents the vision of someone goaded into destructive
action by his own suffering. this suffering, however, is now revealed to
the sensitive interpreter as something conjoined with the cultural milieu
of the sufferer, for it is precisely by way of this milieu that he is consti-
tuted as a sufferer. the criminal craves a meaning for his suffering and
finds it in the joy of a violence directed at the world around him. the
world hurts him, so he turns his pain back upon it, seeking to bring
about harm to the very things that have brought harm to him. What in
the criminal is deemed “evil” by society becomes for him a means of self-
definition. the pale criminal’s evil is paradigmatic: it states in bold terms
what the evil of his times and culture amounts to – he is a symptom of the
values that have given rise to what has become of him. in other times,
with different tables of values (i.e. given a different hierarchy of good
and evil) the self-hatred and hence self-interpretation of the criminal
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would take on a different form, or be found not in him but perhaps in

those who now sit in judgement over him.8
in the past, when doubting and asserting oneself were deemed the
greatest of evils, zarathustra notes,9 the person made sick within these
rigid normative structures was deemed a heretic and witch and treated
accordingly. then, also, since they suffered thereby they interpreted
themselves accordingly and sought solace by trying to inflict suffering
in this form. the person who is deemed evil and a “witch” comes to see
herself in these terms and resists domination by recourse to the only
thing available, however mythical, namely witchcraft. thus, the crimi-
nal’s self-interpreted identity is always already mediated by the dominant
norms of his or her time. What is deemed “evil” brings about, through its
being deemed “evil,” the self-loathing and catastrophe on the part of the
one judged and condemned as a deviant and outsider. this insight,
zarathustra holds, cannot be grasped within the formal space of the
juridical court. the judge’s ears must be closed to the truth of what
zarathustra says, for proclaiming the essential, ontological innocence of
the criminal causes pain to so-called “good people.” the virtue of these
people, zarathustra says, is however no more than the virtue of instru-
mental calculation. their virtues are prescriptions that ensure longevity
and ease. they are a product of the demand that the fabric of the every-
day world be preserved. it would be better if they suffered like the pale
criminal from a madness that would destroy them, for in their self-
righteous claim to know already what good and evil is they represent
nothing more or less than the smug self-contentment of the last man.
Last man’s justice is no justice at all. it is merely the power of habit and
custom making itself felt. it is the expression of a social function that is
numbered amongst the preconditions that must be at work for any col-
lective form of social organization (for the community, which is an as-
semblage of the “weak”) to exist.
Nietzsche uses zarathustra to voice his rejection of the power of con-
formity that makes itself manifest in the form of the last man. As is often
the case, Nietzsche treads a subtle line here. custom has made us the
creatures that we are. it is only because of the fashioning of our ancestors
by customs and norms that a newer and more subtle justice can now
emerge in us. the rejection of the power of custom, of customary justice
and its habitual judgements concerning what is good and evil, must, it
follows, be done in a careful manner. For one thing, Nietzsche’s kind of
8 see also the discussion of the criminal in Twilight of the Idols, “skirmishes of an
untimely Man,” 45.
9 that is, in the era of the dominance of the morality of custom.
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rejection of the rule of custom must not be confused with another con-
temporary rejection of it. What zarathustra teaches must not be mis-
taken for the advocacy of something else. this “something else” is the
modern state.
5. The state is an idol; it dissolves traditions, peoples, and “herds.” A people ex-
presses through its values its sense of identity and power. All values, in other
words, are a matter of locale. They express the relationship between a form of life (a
people) and its environment. Values express a people’s creative response to the de-
mands of life. The modern state seeks to usurp this condition by making itself the
sole object of esteem. Where customs and peoples are matters of locality, the state
seeks to extend its sphere of influence; its goal is that of a formalistic, abstract,
and tyrannical universalism. The modern state is a new Babylon. It takes the
multiplicity of languages of good and evil and blends them into a chaotic parody
of sense. Classificatory convenience rules supreme. Nietzsche’s rejection of the state
is not, however, a rejection of the state as such. The earliest state (see Genealogy,
II, 17) was a tyranny, but a productive one. In modernity, the state represents
nothing more than the desire for safety and predictability characteristic of the “last
man.” Modern, liberal, democratic social order represents the regularization of
social forms by forces of mass consumption in answer to the demand for economic
efficiency spawned by the worship of money. The modern state is bourgeois self-
justification raised to a guiding principle of belief. Its absolutism smothers genu-
ine experimentation with values in favour of a trivialized world of mass
“entertainment” spurred on by the demand for fame and adulation. Values become
reduced to mere accessories to be worn and taken off at a whim. The demands of
the moment hold sway, as do the principles of a mass culture that, in spite of its
apparently metropolitan aspect, is narrow and hegemonic. Modernity, in this way,
threatens to revert to the customary and tyrannical condition that preceded it, but
in a manner devoid of creative potential and unjust in attitude toward anyone
drawn to the creative life.
For zarathustra, the modern state threatens a new idolatry (Zarathustra,

i, “On the New idol”). the modern state overturns the rule of tradition,
of “peoples and herds,” signalling the demise of such social forms and
their competing modes of evaluation. Valuing is culture (Zarathustra, i,
“On the thousand and One Goals”). No culture has yet existed that did
not first begin by holding something in esteem. self-preservation re-
quires that one esteems differently from one’s neighbour. thus, in so far
as they are many, human cultures will esteem in varying and often in-
compatible ways. the incompatibility can be extreme: one people’s good
might be another’s evil. Different peoples are therefore condemned to
misunderstand one another. What a people regard as being difficult they
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call “commendable,” and whatever seems to be both difficult and essen-

tial to them they call “good.” What sets them free from the greatest need,
that which is rarest and most difficult of all, they call “holy.” “Whatever
makes them rule and triumph and shine, to the awe and envy of their
neighbors, that is to them the high, the first, the measure, the meaning
of all things.” Values, therefore, are expressions of power and locality. if
one can divine a people’s need, its geographical situation and its neigh-
bours, one can readily grasp the “the law [Gesetz] of its overcomings” – in
effect, the law that dictates its particular law-like condition of life. All
good and evil is, it follows, a creation of human need. that it springs
from need does not make it any less miraculous in its being created. the
miracle, however, is a human miracle – one tied closely to the random-
ness of circumstance and unconscious forces rather than being a matter
of conscious creation – but it is something miraculous nonetheless.
the modern state, however, wishes to usurp the identity of peoples and
stand there in their stead as the self-proclaimed essence of value10
(Zarathustra, i, “On the New idol”). it wishes to claim for itself the status
of a “people” even though it is this notion’s antithesis.11 Where the state
appears and dominates, says zarathustra, there can be no people. the
state, it follows, represents a force that overturns the power of custom.
the state stands against the morality of custom, but it does so only in so
far as it seeks to substitute itself for it. thus, according to zarathustra, the
modern state does not seek to overturn the kind of hegemony that the
morality of custom epitomizes but to usurp it. this usurpation takes the
form of a kind of bad parody. Whereas different communities and cul-
tures spontaneously cultivate their own language of good and evil and
develop their own world of customary observances, rights, and duties,
the modern state merely takes these judgements and practices and mim-
ics them. such mimicry is necessary for the furtherance of the state’s
own, quite different universalistic ends. For this reason, the state reveals
itself as a Babylonian-style chaos of value, as a simultaneous disordering
and retention of value judgements in which various languages of good
and evil are intermingled, muddled, and confused in the service of the
administrative goals of regulation and prim orderliness. zarathustra ar-
gues that this signals a death-wish. Where all spontaneously arising codes
10 One can consider Nietzsche’s 1873 essay, “David strauss, the confessor and the writ-
er,” the first of the Untimely Meditations, as an attack on the kind of state worship he con-
demns here. strauss’s celebration of German supremacy in the aftermath of political
unification under Bismarck is, for him, the epitome of cultural philistinism.
11 “Where there is still a people, it does not understand the state and hates it as the evil
eye and the sin against customs and rights” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i, “On the New idol”).
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of good and evil are living languages that denote evaluative practices ex-
pressing the identity of the community that speaks and thereby observes
them, the doubled and borrowed language that the state cultivates is one
that has been severed from its conditions of life and is hence already
dead. the state’s codification of values is merely a fixed ordering of terms
regulated according to their ability to serve the state’s own hegemonic
needs. For the modern state, values are not lived. they are merely conve-
nient modes of classification.
One should note that the state in question here is not the state per se.
typically, for Nietzsche, nothing exists in and of itself: there is no state as
such and never can be, even if the modern state might like to persuade
us to believe otherwise. the modern state is not the same as the original
state discussed by Nietzsche in the later text of On the Genealogy of Morality.
the latter is the source of the tyrannical imposition of an unheard of
slavery on our primitive promising ancestors whose consequence is the
“internalization of man”12 and the development of the productive sense
of self-loathing that Nietzsche baptizes with the name “bad conscience”
(Genealogy, ii, 17).13 the new idol is, in contrast, a tyranny of sterility, the
world of the last man raised to a guiding principle. the modern state is
the emerging liberal-democratic state. this is the state of mass culture,
where exchange-value is paramount, the state that presides over a social
order dedicated to servicing the economic machines of mass production
and mass communication: “Behold the superfluous! they steal the works
of the inventors and the treasures of the sages for themselves; ‘educa-
tion’ they call their theft … they vomit their gall and call it a newspaper
…. they gather riches and become poorer with them. they want power
and first the lever of power, much money – the impotent paupers!”
(Zarathustra, i, “On the New idol”). the description of the state offered
here is of bourgeois culture writ large. this is a state that presides over a
12 As Nandita Biswas Mellamphy notes in The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche (3–4),
the moment of internalization marks, for Nietzsche, the “constitutive moment” at which
the human being ceases to be a mere animal and becomes a political being. Politicization
is thus marked by the “complexification” of mere animal nature into an instrumental entity
endowed with a specifically moral memory. it is this moralization that constitutes the hu-
man animal as a specifically political subject.
13 Gilles Deleuze articulates the dynamic of bad conscience and ressentiment in terms of
the notions of self and other. Ressentiment captures the dynamic of attributing blame to
others (“it’s your fault”) and bad conscience the attribution of blame to oneself (“it’s my
fault”). these two conditions of judgement are the conditions in virtue of which respon-
sibility emerges, and these three elements become “the fundamental categories of christian
and semitic thought, of our way of thinking and interpreting existence in general” (Nietzsche
and Philosophy, 21).
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world lacking creativity, one where education has become usurpation, a

world dominated by a media and communications system that is a mere
means to the outpouring of manipulative bad feeling sanctioned as
public opinion, where the acquisition of money for power and the pur-
suit of self-indulgence and passive, uncreative pleasure is sanctified and
deemed holy.
With the modern state and its world we are flung into the midst of the
public realm of exchange, of buying and selling, of “poisonous flies”
and “performers” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i, “On the Flies in the Market
Place”). this is a realm of mass entertainment. “Performing” in this
sense has nothing to do with the creativity that zarathustra esteems.
the world, zarathustra holds, turns around the creators of new values,
whereas the performer who dominates the arena of the market has only
the crowd and fame for satellites. What counts most is the largest amount
of noise, the most memorable affect that can be mustered. As with the
modern state that presides over the market place so, in the market place,
too, values are rendered meaningless: they become mere playthings,
adornments to be worn for effect and cast aside. Values no longer exist
in a meaningful sense because what is valued is what is new, and the new
is valued for purely instrumental reasons; its newness is destined to decay
and pass away before the end of the shortest day. the market place is
thus a sphere packed with “solemn” looking clowns, pranksters who want
the comfort of instant answers that can be given to them unconditionally
and forgotten just as rapidly. the best place to be is as far away from such
people as possible, since the danger to one whose sensibility does not
accord with that of the crowd lies in his or her having to bear “all their
poisonous injustice [all ihr giftiges Unrecht].”
the market place and the modern state together signal a new imposi-
tion of constraint akin to the tyranny of custom, but one formalized by
way of public administrative machinery and capable of extending itself
beyond the locality from which it springs. For Nietzsche this is regressive.
it is like a reassertion of the primitive conditions governing the emer-
gence of human sociality, subjectivity, and intellectuality, but formalized
and devoid of the productive potential of the tyranny of the morality of
custom. the person who thinks differently, the one who does not accede
to the universal norm of conformity imposed by state and market, is des-
tined to public excoriation. A being who does not live for the moment
and for the glory of public celebration is an enigma to this modern
world. if you are such a person, says zarathustra, “they punish you for all
your virtues. they excuse you at bottom only – your wrong choices.
Because you are mild and have a sense of justice [gerechten Sinnes], you
say: ‘they are innocent in their little existence.’ But their restricted souls
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think: ‘Guilty is all great existence’” (Zarathustra, i, “On the New idol”).
the person who does not conform is, in such a situation, condemned to
be the bad conscience of those around him and, in consequence, the
object of resentment and hatred. the independent person who is re-
sented most in this way is treated in a manner akin to the criminal: they
are shunned and condemned as beings whose deeds exceed the domain
of propriety. the exemplary instance of such a person is the creator.
6. The essence of human creativity is revealed by esteeming and valuing. Esteeming

and valuing endow the world with sense. They are always a matter of particular
times and places. Peoples, Zarathustra tells us, were the first creators, then indi-
viduals – the latter being itself the newest creation of culture. In the idea of the
overman Nietzsche seeks to represent the essential plurality of valuing in individu-
ated form. The overman represents the ideal of multiplicity, its acknowledgement
and affirmation, raised to a guiding principle. The overman is not separated from
the rest of humanity by a difference in kind. What differentiates him is something
qualitative – he has what others lack: freedom. Freedom is, for Nietzsche, the condi-
tion of creativity. Being “free” for him, however, is not equivalent in meaning to
being left alone (“freedom from”). Freedom, rather, is a matter of deeds. It denotes
the condition in which what is at stake in an action is its sense. Being free means
being free to create; it denotes a condition in which no higher court of appeal than
one’s own judgement can be found. In this condition, the self is at once the source
and subject of its own authority: it becomes a being capable of subjecting itself to
its own demands, codes, and laws. In this regard, the creative self Nietzsche articu-
lates fulfils the historical condition that gave rise to it, namely, its endowment from
Christianity. The self that Nietzsche seeks to cultivate is the consequence of the
Christian cultivation of the “will to truth.” Freedom happens when the self turns
on the Christian cultural conditions in which it was shaped in fulfilment of a
general “law of life,” which makes all law-givers answerable to the law they them-
selves make. History is the history of the becoming and self-overcoming of values.
As Christian authority recedes it leaves behind a lacuna of authority that makes
explicit and thereby forces upon us the question of freedom as a question that re-
lates to the value of values. Freedom, on this conception, concerns the most rigor-
ous personal responsibility: it demands self-reflexivity and self-discipline with
regard to what we value. Freedom is not, it follows, a matter of mere “choice,” of
consciousness. Freedom involves acting, performing deeds that are marked by their
refusal to accede uncritically to the norm. The creative person lives performatively:
they enact values.
human creativity, for Nietzsche, is something that is revealed most tell-

ingly in the domain of values. Peoples, in the first instance, are the cre-
ators of values (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i, “On the thousand and One
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Goals”). if, zarathustra tells us, one examines many times, places, and
cultures one finds almost as many different conceptions of good and
evil. here is testimony to the created nature of values. the evaluations
denoted by the words “good” and “evil” in each case are not discovered,
nor are they gifts from the realm of the divine. they are made. the un-
conscious acknowledgement of this is expressed in the self-description
implicit in the name by which our kind refers to itself, for “‘man’ …
means the esteemer” and measurer (ibid.). esteeming, holding some-
thing to be of value, is the paradigm of the act of creation. it is what
makes human existence rich, for it endows it with sense. A loss of this
evaluative ability entails a loss of sense,14 for sense is not a given. One
cannot afford to underestimate the particularity of evaluating. it is a mat-
ter of peoples and eras and what pertains to them. if one is to embark on
the path of the creation of values, zarathustra argues, this path must
bring one to the acknowledgement and acceptance of both a necessary,
destructive precondition of creation and the historical unfolding of its
articulation: “changing values – that is changing creators. Always de-
stroying, that is what one who is a creator must be. creators were first
peoples and later individuals; truly, the individual himself is still the
youngest creation.” in other words, evaluating is properly interpreted
when it is taken semiotically, i.e. when it is read as a sign denoting hu-
man creativity. creation permeates human identity – it is constitutive of
it. creation is made manifest in the original communal conditions of
human social life and, by degrees and unconsciously, as the individual is
fashioned by the normative powers of tradition and exchange, becomes
a characteristic feature of some persons just as much as it has been of
peoples and races. in turn, creative peoples and individuals are, from
the standpoint of the hierarchies of value that precede them, essen-
tially destructive. Doing, i.e. activity rather than abstract conceptualiza-
tion, is essential in all this. A change from one system of values to
another is a sign that one mode of evaluating, and hence one kind of
creating, has usurped another. One might say that changes of value, of
orders of giving praise and condemning, are signs of shifts in the distri-
bution of power from one set of interests to another, of colonial redistri-
butions of power. evaluation is hence an exemplary case of colonization.
in this regard, the idea of the overman presents the unique instance of
a colonization without parallel, one that, should it be accepted, can
serve to bind together the normative variety of evaluative practices and
14 hence the madman’s diagnosis in section 125 of The Gay Science of the death of God
as a crisis of sense. With the loss of faith in the absolute measure of esteeming claimed by
the God of christian faith comes the threat of a vertiginous, absolute senselessness.
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self-understandings that have hitherto characterized humankind by unit-

ing them in one goal. through the overman, the essentially inhuman
power of “praising and censuring” (inhuman because it is a kind of mon-
strosity, something which flows through humanity as its animating force
since it is the condition of the feeling of sense that is a requirement of
human life15) is brought under the yoke of an all-encompassing idea si-
multaneously capable of unifying the multiplicity that has flowed from it
and of affirming this multiplicity as multiplicity.16
the herd, the realm of the good and the just, hates the solitary, even
though the individual as creator is likewise a being that has sprung from
the herd (Zarathustra, i, “On the Way of the creator”). creators are not
different in kind from the masses. the creative person suffers from soli-
tude no less than everyone else.17 the path of creative freedom, of being
“a wheel that rolls itself” is, however, the only path to creation and what
15 the third essay of the Genealogy offers Nietzsche’s most sustained treatment of this
issue. Nietzsche’s argument there is that sense is the distinctive and essential need of the
human animal. We need sense, above all, to cope with the suffering that is part of the hu-
man lot. to be human is to be a creature that has broken with nature. But the cost of this
is an antipathy to our own constitutedness. We are beings of drives and of cultural norms,
and we have a resulting propensity to experience our drives and hence our embodiment in
an alienated condition since, on occasion, the domain of embodiment comes into grind-
ing conflict with the power of social structures. Our social nature, therefore, creates in us
the propensity to suffer from ourselves. sense, the belief in a reason that governs existence
and thereby explains and justifies human suffering, is in this way the condition of human-
kind’s redemption from itself. the ascetic priest, a universal presence in human history, is
a figure who preys on this redemptive need by infecting it with the concept of guilt. that
priests appear to be present in all human societies in all ages testifies to the power of the
human need for sense in the face of the suffering peculiar to it alone. Nietzsche’s maxim,
stated at the essay’s beginning and end, sums up its significance for him: we are the kind of
animal that “would rather will nothingness than not will at all.” sense is thereby conjoined
with the conception of will to power. An earlier discussion of this is offered in section 1 of
The Gay Science in relation to the “great economy” of human existence.
16 it is worth recalling here the following passage, cited earlier: “‘this is my way; where
is yours?’ – thus i answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ For the way – that does not exist”
(Zarathustra, iii, “On the spirit of Gravity,” 2). the overman epitomizes this conception: it
offers a vision of the fulfilment of human potential, but does so in terms that refuse to claim
that the source of the power of this vision resides in an authority derived from a universal
norm. there is no single “way” to the overman in the sense of there being a “method”
which leads inevitably to its attainment. the overman is not, in short, to be confused with a
soufflé. A soufflé is made by recourse to a recipe. so long as one combines the ingredients
and follows the steps of the recipe one gets one’s soufflé. No single combination of ingredi-
ents and actions always leads to the overman, since what most epitomizes it is particularity
- the dice throw of the unexpected (see Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 25).
17 “And when you say ‘i no longer have a common conscience with you,’ it will be a la-
ment and an agony.”
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characterizes the person who chooses such a path is not what they can
endure but how they endure it. they are qualitatively different. their
distinctiveness lies in the fact that they are beings capable of endurance
and hardness. to be such a person one must show one has both the
“right [Recht]” and the strength that is the sign of this right: one must be
“such a one as is permitted” the ability to escape the “yoke” of convention.
in short, creativity requires freedom. thus, freedom, evaluation, and
creativity are related, and they are related by zarathustra in terms of law:
“there are some who threw away their last value when they threw away
their servitude. Free from what [Frei wovon?]? As if that mattered to
zarathustra! But your eyes should tell me brightly: free for what [frei
wozu]? can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang
your own will over yourself as a law? can you be your own judge and
avenger of your law? terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger
of one’s own law” (ibid.). “Free,” zarathustra holds, is a word whose sig-
nificance is symptomatic. to think of freedom as being free from something,
as an escape into a state characterized by the absence of compulsion,
means to take it to signify a passive, purely negative condition. the per-
son who conceives of their liberty in this way risks nihilism, for their sup-
posed “liberation” is in reality nothing more than a casting off of what
they value. With this one also casts off what it is about oneself that makes
one who one is. For Nietzsche, this notion of freedom as liberation from
compulsion is thus an empty illusion, a form of self-negation that erases
the very thing it purports to elevate. having an ideal of freedom that in
effect valorizes escape, the throwing off of something that is experienced
as no more than a binding limitation, is not freedom at all; it is privation,
the self reduced to senselessness, since its supposed emancipation ren-
ders it incapable of valuing.
Freedom, for Nietzsche, is encountered only in and as a question of
action. to be free, zarathustra contends, requires a subject who both acts
in such a way that its actions are the embodied expression of its values
and is in such a way that this acting and hence these values are an issue
for it.18 One’s actions are thereby rendered a self-reflexive declaration of
identity. Being free means asking about the sense of one’s doing and
consequently about the sense of one’s valuing. to ask of oneself “free for
what?” involves an invocation of purpose, it generates the kind of willing
characteristic of freedom, the will to make values: “Willing liberates: that
is the true teaching of will and liberty … Willing no more and esteeming
18 see in connection John Richardson’s discussion of freedom in Nietzsche’s New

Darwinism, 95ff.
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no more and creating no more – oh, that this great weariness might al-
ways remain far from me!” (Zarathustra, ii, “upon the Blessed isles”) the
question of freedom is in this way rendered evaluative and creative. the
self liberated from the tyranny of custom and tradition encounters itself
first and foremost as a free being in whom the “for what” is at stake with
regard to itself. At the same time, the liberated self experiences this ques-
tion in a context where any higher court of appeal is now lacking. there
is for the liberated person no superior source of authority that extends
beyond them, no power that does not require their active assent. in such
a condition, the self becomes not only the source of its own authority
but also the object of that authority; it is, likewise, witness and judge of
that authority.
to be all these is to stand as both the origin of law and the subject of
the law one has made. in this regard, the self refracts the condition of
history that surrounds and constitutes it. this is the history that Nietzsche’s
thought seeks to overcome, namely the history of christianity. christianity
may be something Nietzsche attacks, seemingly without respite in his lat-
er writings, but it is also something to be esteemed no less than it is to be
denigrated, for christianity is decisive in its shaping and sharpening of
the modern soul. indeed, such is christianity’s decisiveness in this regard
that it cannot be overcome by mere refutation. One cannot simply reason
oneself out of it.19 What matters about christianity is its greatness, a great-
ness signified by the fact that christianity, like all grandly formative
things, ultimately overcomes itself: “All great things bring about their
own demise through an act of self-sublimation [Selbstaufhebung]: that is
the law of life [das Gesetz des Lebens], the law of necessary “self-overcoming”
in the essence of life [das Gesetz der nothwendigen “Selbstüberwindung” im
Wesen des Lebens], – the lawgiver [Gesetzgeber] himself is always ultimately
exposed to the cry “patere legem, quam ipse tulisti” [“submit to the law you
19 consider in this context the point made by Nietzsche in sections 20 and 21 of the
second essay of the Genealogy on the christian “moralization” of the concepts of guilt and
duty. Although, Nietzsche notes in section 21, he has just spoken at the end of section 20
as if a decline in religious belief would initiate a decline in feelings of guilt and duty, he
suddenly denies this possibility: “i actually [just] spoke as though this moralization did not
exist” and therefore as if the concepts of guilt and duty would cease to have meaning once
the “basic premise” of “belief in our ‘creditor,’ in God” is erased. On the contrary, the
process of moralization brings with it a sense of eternal indebtedness that the loss of reli-
gious belief does nothing to negate, for moralization conjoins the concepts of guilt and
duty with the notion of individual sin. the self-hatred that springs from this, Nietzsche
argues, cannot be easily wiped out by the mere loss of faith, for this sense of self-loathing
has been culturally embedded and takes its place amongst the conditions constitutive of
self-understanding.
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yourself have made”]” (Genealogy, iii, 27). christian dogma was de-
stroyed and, in its wake, christian morality will also be destroyed, but this
is not the case with regard to the legacy of christianity, which abides. the
great achievement of christianity has been to create a human being that
desires the truth and at the same time is forced to ask what this desire,
this “will to truth,” means. this is the moment in which freedom hap-
pens. From the compulsion inaugurated by the strict training in christian
ideals comes christianity’s own self-overcoming, as it succumbs to the
very desire for truth that it sought to instil.20 this, according to Nietzsche,
is the law of life – the law that trumps all other laws: it is the organic con-
dition that fashions all culture as it unfolds historically.21 it is in obedi-
ence to this law of life that, as the authority of christianity recedes, it
leaves behind it a lacuna in the shape of the absence of a higher court of
arbitration on the basis of which it is possible to deduce legitimate val-
ues. this loss of authority forces upon us the question of freedom as a
question of creativity in relation to values. to ask “what is one free to
do?” means “what is it that one should deem worthy?” to ask about this
is to begin a self-reflexive enquiry into the matter of creating values,
tending them, observing them, and by doing so making one answerable
to oneself as judge and jury. Genuine freedom, in other words, entails
the greatest form of responsibility, for it demands of a person that they
both create values and judge not merely the world about them but also
themselves according to the norms that these values solidify into. in the
same way that Nietzsche in Daybreak envisages the criminal arriving at a
state where they are judge and executive with regard to their own pun-
ishment, so the richest form of selfhood is possible only if one meets the
requirement of the cultivation of a rigorous self-discipline.
this is the most severe form of freedom one can envisage, for it is at
the same time the greatest, perhaps most tyrannical, form of compulsion.
20 in the words of Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, “the will to truth, in which truthfulness de-
velops, is rooted in the moral understanding of the world” which is itself a cloak marking
very different drives that seek domination (Friedrich Nietzsche, 60). truth cannot, it follows,
be separated from power.
21 zarathustra makes Nietzsche’s commitment to this “law” clear enough: “Verily, i say
unto you: good and evil that are not transitory do not exist. Driven on by themselves, they
must overcome themselves again and again. With your values and words of good and evil
you do violence when you value; and this is your hidden love and the splendor and trem-
bling and overflowing of your soul. But a more violent force and a new overcoming grow
out of your values and break egg and eggshell. And whoever must be a creator in good
and evil, verily, he must first be an annihilator and break values. thus the highest evil
belongs to the highest goodness: but this is creative” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ii, “On
self-Overcoming”).
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As the text of Zarathustra tells us, real freedom seizes the self. Freedom is
not a matter of conscious “choice.” it erupts as a compulsion and im-
perative, as a necessity and an “ought” that cannot be elided without
paying the price of self-harm in a manner that echoes the compulsion
that is a condition of the self-understanding of the “sovereign individual”
discussed in section 2 of the second essay of the Genealogy.22 Nietzsche
often praises the notion of solitude. implicit in this conception is the
freedom of such solitude. One is alone in the sense that one is able to
turn to no higher authority than oneself when it comes to the question
of judging oneself, and with that comes great responsibility – for how
many of us are sufficiently free to manage such a thing, free enough to
be severe with regard to ourselves first and foremost? this is why free-
dom is a rare (if not the rarest) of human endowments: few of us are
capable of it because few are inclined to be their own sternest judge.23 it
is for this reason that Nietzsche regards the greater part of history to be
comprised of mere events rather than genuine deeds. Genuine freedom
does not involve acting in conformity with morality, as a thinker like Kant
would argue; it involves acting creatively, making values rather than sim-
ply acceding to them. the fifth part of Beyond Good and Evil, “On the
Natural history of Morality,” bears witness to this contention. Morality,
Nietzsche argues, has a “natural history,” and morality can be attributed
22 the being that Nietzsche calls the “sovereign individual” in the Genealogy, ii, 2–3, is
depicted as the outcome and justification of the contingent and violent pre-historical con-
ditions that gave rise to humankind. the sovereign individual is the outcome of the de-
velopment under the tyranny of the morality of custom that gave rise to a humanity able to
make promises and keep to its word. When detached from the habitual and traditional
conditions that characterize its origins, this ability reveals for the first time a human being
capable of autonomy with regard to the norms that characterize the community. Nietzsche
calls the sovereign individual a “supra-ethical” creature whose ability to keep his or her
word (i.e. “the right to make a promise”) has led it to feel itself to be the “completion” of
humankind “in general” and hence its justification. in comparison to the person driven by
their impulses, the sovereign individual is a free being, a “master of the free will.” Freedom,
in other words, is no mere matter of being endowed with a “free will” of some kind; it also
entails being constrained by the normative commitments one has made oneself. “the per-
son who is free is ‘the being who can promise,’ said Nietzsche, with penetrating insight;
and i would add: ‘and the being who must keep his promise.’ through the promise i make
i make myself – equivocal thought i am – unequivocal for others and for myself” (Moltmann,
“Freedom in community,” in God for a Secular Society, 157). On the interpretation offered
here Moltmann’s addition to Nietzsche’s view is also already Nietzsche’s.
23 One might note here that the event of “the ‘death of God’ ” pertains to this concep-
tion of freedom. the possible consequences of the fact that the christian God has ceased to
be believable are, Nietzsche notes in section 343 of The Gay Science, more or less invisible to
the majority of people. the event’s significance is manifest only to “the few” who are capable
of both noting it and dwelling on its implications, by which he means those who are free.
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such a history because it is a realm not of freedom but of a compulsion

no less tyrannical than any other in nature – but a compulsion that has
the long term consequence of making freedom possible. culture, in oth-
er words, emerges from nature as a piece of it. culture is hence nature
turned against itself and it is this doubled relationship, this turning over
and around of the realm of the drives to create a sense of inside and out
(of culture and nature, community and stranger) that generates the con-
ditions that give rise to an animal capable of transcending the nature out
of which it was formed.
7. Section 186 of Beyond Good and evil explores the sense of responsibility and
freedom that Nietzsche advocates. Freedom is not a matter of mere “choice,” or “let-
ting go” as opposed to being subject to compulsion. All moralities impose condi-
tions of long-term servitude on humankind. This is not, as one might think,
contrary to nature. What is “natural,” for Nietzsche, is always a matter of some-
thing having been imposed, learned, imbibed, and rendered second nature. This is
the precondition of freedom. Creative activity, such as that of the writer or com-
poser, is always the product of discipline. Creative expression comes only because
the creator has absorbed the discipline necessary for their craft to the point where it
becomes a necessary part of them. Freedom thus springs from compulsion. Section
262 of Beyond Good and evil explores this further in relation to the “aristo-
cratic polis.” Such social structures initially develop a morality that promotes some
propensities and hinders others as a result of their need to survive. When life gets
easier and survival is no longer threatened, the morality of the polis begins to slip,
for it is no longer necessary. At such moments, one sees a sudden eruption of ex-
periments in living as the old morality falls away but still leaves behind the disci-
plined type of person it has forged. Shorn of the constraints of morality individuals
dare to live dangerously – they become creative. Here is the possibility of beings
capable of legislating their own lives. This form of self-legislation is, for Nietzsche,
the paradigm for genuine philosophical thought and Beyond Good and evil
seeks to rethink philosophy in the light of this paradigm. Where philosophy has
hitherto been rationalistic dogma, Nietzsche proffers a “philosopher of the future”
who is characterized by the ability to command and give laws.
Nietzsche’s demand for “a typology of morality” in part 5 of Beyond Good

and Evil, “On the Natural history of Morality” (section 186) is an invita-
tion to study the conditions from which the sense of philosophical re-
sponsibility and freedom he extols emerges. these conditions begin with
morality. in contrast to “letting go,” morality always appears to be “a
piece of tyranny against ‘nature,’ likewise against ‘reason’: but that can
be no objection to it unless one is in possession of some other morality
which decrees that any kind of tyranny and unreason is impermissible”
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(Beyond Good and Evil, 188). What characterizes every morality, above all,
is the “essential and invaluable element” that each is an example of a
long-lived and hence enduring “compulsion.” this condition of servi-
tude, however, is not to be too readily denigrated, for it is the precondi-
tion of
all there is or has been on earth of freedom, subtlety, boldness,

dance and masterly certainty, whether in thinking itself, or in rul-
ing, or in speaking and persuasion, in the arts as in morals, has
evolved only by virtue of the “tyranny of such arbitrary laws”; and,
in all seriousness, there is no small probability that precisely this is
“nature” and “natural” – and not that laisser aller [letting go]! every
artist knows how far from the feeling of letting himself go his “nat-
ural” condition is, the free ordering, placing, disposing, forming in
the moment of “inspiration” – and how strictly and subtly he then
obeys a thousandfold laws which precisely on account of their se-
verity and definiteness mock all formulation in concepts (even the
firmest concept is by comparison something fluctuating, manifold,
ambiguous). the essential thing in “heaven and upon earth”
seems, to say it again, to be a protracted obedience in one direction:
from out of that there always emerges and has always emerged in
the long run something for the sake of which it is worthwhile to
live on earth, for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spiritu-
ality – something transfiguring, refined, mad and divine. (ibid.)
Freedom, in other words, springs from compulsion. it requires a locat-

ed and fashioned selfhood that has been given form by the imposition
of a multitude of laws which in the free person attain such a level of
severity of articulation, richness, and complexity that they defy defini-
tion. section 262 of Beyond Good and Evil develops the point as Nietzsche
invites us to think of “an aristocratic community,” such as the ancient
Greek city-state, “as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the pur-
pose of breeding.” Breeding concerns the cultivation of a structure of in-
stitutions, practices, and norms that bind people together in a social
body. Any city-state consists of a specific range of normative conditions
under which certain types of human are cultivated, i.e. in which they are
taught to value a certain attitude toward life and thereby cultivate pro-
pensities that are deemed to harmonize with and promote this attitude.
What is cultivated in the first instance in the aristocratic polis is a limited
type of person. the individual is limited because the survival of the com-
munity is the ruling power that governs its social order. such communi-
ties are usually founded in conditions under which they must either
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survive or perish, which is why “every aristocratic morality … counts in-

tolerance itself among the virtues under the name ‘justice.’” One day,
though, the fearful conditions pass and life gets easier. in consequence,
by degrees the old morality loses its authority; it no longer seems neces-
sary since it has ceased to be “a condition of existence,” and therefore
the limits imposed by it vanish. in the aftermath of this,
Variation, whether as deviation (into the higher, rarer, more re-

fined) or as degeneration and monstrosity, is suddenly on the
scene in the greatest splendour and abundance; the individual
dares to be individual and stand out. At these turning-points of his-
tory there appear side by side and often entangled and entwined
together a glorious, manifold, jungle-like growth and up-stirring, a
kind of tropical tempo in competition and growing, and a tremen-
dous perishing and self-destruction, thanks to the savage egoisms
which, turning on one another and as it were exploding, wrestle
together for “sun and light” and no longer know how to draw any
limitation, any restraint, any forbearance from the morality which
stored up such enormous energy, which bent the bow in such a
threatening manner – now it is “spent,” now it is becoming “out-
lived.” (Beyond Good and Evil, 262)
As this passage makes plain, disciplinary structures are, for Nietzsche,

constraints which have the effect of channelling, fashioning, and storing
up energies and propensities. With the demise of the compulsion associ-
ated with the disciplinary structure powers are unleashed and life takes
on the additional dimension of experiment, of living beyond the norms
that hitherto dominated. in this way, the discipline of morality cultivates,
through the constraints of its institutions, an animal inclined to over-
come itself. it is here, at such times of creative crisis that the moment
arises when a being endowed with the potential to legislate its own exis-
tence may appear.
this notion of self-legislation is the key to Nietzsche’s conception of
freedom and likewise his aspiration for philosophy. indeed, Nietzsche
seeks nothing less than to rethink what philosophy is in the light of the
notions of nature, freedom, and responsibility outlined above. Philosophy
needs rethinking because in order to give voice to his notion of freedom
Nietzsche must take us beyond the confines of what philosophical
thought is traditionally considered to be. Philosophy, Nietzsche often
implies, is generally misunderstood; but the greatest irony is that phi-
losophy is most grossly misunderstood by those who feel themselves clos-
est to it, by philosophers themselves. Where philosophy has hitherto
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taken itself to exemplify the highest self-consciousness and rationality,

Nietzsche finds a series of unconscious ruses. Once decoded these ruses
are revealed as unwitting confessions that give testimony to the drives
that have made each great thinker philosophize in the way he does
(Beyond Good and Evil, 6). Philosophy, it turns out, has all too often been
mere dogmatism, not the free engagement of reflective rationality but
unthinking unfreedom and adherence to convention; and this lack of
freedom abides so long as the necessary and constitutive role of the
drives and feelings in thought is suppressed. Dogmatism, the worship of
a chimerical reason conceived of as pure thought, must be swept away
and replaced by a new kind of thinking and a new species of thinker
worthy of it (40–4). the notion of will to power represents one attempt
at this new kind of thought in its drawing of power relations to the centre
of our understanding of history, identity, and culture.24 here is the epit-
ome of Nietzsche’s post-metaphysical naturalism. here, likewise, is re-
vealed the complexity that his naturalism aspires to. Nietzsche’s image of
himself as a wearer of masks in section 40 of Beyond Good and Evil places
this in context. the wearer of masks is an embodiment of contrary views
on life, a site of power struggles, a person who is the battle-ground of a
wealth of oppositions. such oppositions and internal conflicts are what
make human beings rich in potential and thereby make possible the
kind of “free spirit” that in turn invites us to envisage the new sort of
24 the notion of will to power has been interpreted in many ways. heidegger, for in-
stance, interprets it as a metaphysical notion that itself erupts as a consequence of
Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics. the will to power reveals that thought is constituted by
power relations, and hence that the metaphysician’s desire for the absolute is in reality
grounded in concrete struggles. however, heidegger argues, as soon as Nietzsche posits
will to power as a universal condition of life he too capitulates to the metaphysical urge.
Nietzsche is thus envisaged as a thinker who sees beyond metaphysics but remains inexor-
ably trapped within it. For heidegger, Nietzsche’s thought about justice springs from this
universalist conception of will to power. interestingly, although heidegger considers jus-
tice to be an important element in Nietzsche’s early writings, he argues that it ultimately
occupies a marginal place within Nietzsche’s metaphysics (see Nietzsche, Volume iii, “truth
as Justice” and “Justice”). stanley Rosen has offered an excellent engagement with this as-
pect of heidegger’s relation to Nietzsche in The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger,
234–45. Rosen’s intention in this book is to offer a sympathetic interpretation of Platonism
as a philosophy of practice and thereby defend it against heidegger’s argument that
Nietzsche, as the last metaphysician of the West, is the last gasp of a metaphysics that is
guided inexorably toward nihilism. Rosen questions heidegger’s attribution of justice to a
place within Nietzsche’s cosmology and metaphysics. As i have argued, will to power can
also be read as a normative rather than metaphysical notion (see “Nietzsche, Normativity
and Will to Power”). suffice it to say that my discussions in that paper and this book take
will to power to be a development of the naturalistic philosophy of practices Nietzsche initi-
ates in Human, All Too Human.
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philosopher, the “philosopher of the future,” a being whose most promi-

nent and hence defining attributes are those of commanding and law-
giving. it is these attributes that mark them out as persons who are free.
8. Philosophers of the future will be sceptics. Their central concerns will be freedom
and creativity. Suffering for them cannot be an objection to something; indeed, it
is sought out by such “free spirits” as a spur to their own development. In this they
exemplify and even celebrate Nietzsche’s belief that all human advancement
springs from being challenged by the world we inhabit. Thought, for example,
emerged as a response to threatening nature as an attempt to master it. The phi-
losopher of the future is the summation of this response, not its negation. Such
persons will be creative esteemers, beings who face life armed with intellectuality.
The philosopher of the future is also a person of the utmost accountability. They,
like the overman, stand as testimony to the possibility of a justification for the
chaos and suffering that characterizes human existence. Philosophers of this kind
are held by Nietzsche to be colonizers of their experiences rather than their victims.
Passion, intellect, an inclination to risk-taking, and the propensity to suffer are
part and parcel of this conception of philosophical life. These virtues taken together
Nietzsche baptizes as “Dionysian.” Dionysian thought is the thought of tempta-
tion, for Dionysus is the god who is subversive of the authority of tradition. This
subversiveness is naturalistic: it affirms a transcendence that spurns metaphysics;
it embraces the body in all its plurality and potential. The Dionysian is creativity
– a view confirmed by Nietzsche’s discussion of it in relation to art in the Gay
science (367). Through Dionysian creativity, the possibilities of the body are real-
ized and transfigured. Goethe is a figure who exemplifies the kind of disciplined
self-creation Nietzsche has in mind – the discipline of a rejuvenated “Dionysian
pessimism.” Dionysian thought transcends the sterile, formalistic concerns of the
epistemologist and turns to the task of value creation. Here, rules are not followed
but made. Nietzsche here envisages a kind of thought that establishes the terrain of
new norms for living capable of shaping the future of humanity. The notion of will
to truth is significant in this context. The creative law-giver is a consequence of the
will to truth, enacting a critique of it within its horizon. The creative, law-giving
thinker Nietzsche envisages thus acts self-reflexively within the domain of possibil-
ity delineated by the will to truth. Honesty (truthfulness) is the greatest virtue of
the future philosopher.
Philosophers of the future, Nietzsche tells us, are not to be confused with
those who espouse “modern ideas” (Beyond Good and Evil, 44). they will
stand against the norms that typify Nietzsche’s own times – and presum-
ably against their own. they are neither democrats nor liberals, nor are
they supporters of universal equality. they spurn the comfort of the phys-
icists’ faith in a nature composed of immutable laws (ibid., 22). their
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primary interest is freedom. the free-spirited philosopher of the future

poses and seeks to address the defining question that, as we have seen,
zarathustra poses concerning freedom: “free for what?” this envisioning
of a being driven by an interest in potentiality for freedom compels
Nietzsche to characterize such philosophers as “attempters” (ibid., 41).
the philosopher of the future will be someone in whom an attitude of
creative experimentalism is paramount. A person of this kind must re-
gard their beliefs as a matter of hard won right, and their right to believe
pertains in each thinker’s case to him or her alone, for what they cleave
to is the consequence of the most rigorous individual self-discipline. this
self-discipline means embracing a philosophy that rejects any universal
conception of the good (ibid., 43) and this rejection is what Nietzsche
sees as the defining characteristic of future philosophers, for with it they
reject the spirit of modernity and the ethos of the “last man.”
those who are often mistaken for “free spirits,” Nietzsche notes, abide
by the ideals of the “last man”: they consider suffering to be an objection
to something and desire the eradication of pain from life. the future
philosopher advocates no such thing (Beyond Good and Evil, section 44).
in so far as suffering and danger have always been what has made human-
ity develop into something more admirable than it was hitherto they are
not to be dismissed as an outrage to life but rather affirmed as something
that is constitutive of its wonder. We are beings who need to be forced
into growth, as plants are when light is denied them. in other words, cul-
ture and the highest cultural achievements possible spring from the prov-
ocation to strive: humans need to be challenged into engaging with their
environment with a view to mastering it, and it is this which both pro-
vokes culture and allows humankind to become more than it is. the most
interesting culture for Nietzsche would be a culture that fosters this prov-
ocation to development and growth.25 One might rephrase this view in
less disconcerting terms by saying that what makes us human is the fact
that we need not be mere playthings of nature. We may always stand as
potential victims of the ravages of nature, but in so far as we have always
faced it armed with concepts and rituals and thus with the hope of some-
how subjugating or pacifying it we stand in a relation to nature that no
other kind of animal does. the philosophers of the future represent the
ideal of this aspect of humanity condensed into a thought image com-
prised of single individuals who are each of them both of a kind and one
of a kind. their image conjures the vision of different attempts at creative
25 Needless to say, for Nietzsche the nearest approach of any cultural milieu to such a
condition is that found in Ancient Greece, with the Renaissance running a close second.
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evaluation, each of which exemplifies a humanity endowed with intellect

and facing life by welcoming all that existence might throw at it. For this
reason the future philosopher is presented as a being “of the most com-
plete accountability,” as someone who “has the conscience for the overall
development of mankind” (Beyond Good and Evil, 61).
the philosopher of the future thereby exemplifies a sense of responsi-
bility toward existence in all its plurality, contradictoriness, glorious ex-
cess, pain, and joy. the future philosopher’s sense of responsibility is
ethical: it springs from the refusal to blame or curse anything that may
be encountered in life. the philosophers of the future could never wish
to un-invent anything, could never want any event to be undone. in this
regard, they represent an extravagant demand: Nietzsche thinks that it
should be possible to attempt nothing less than a total accounting of
the conditions that have given rise to humanity that, through such phi-
losophers, justifies these conditions.26 to be responsible in this sense
means accepting and embracing all that has and may happen to one
and thereby to make of everything that life offers an essential part of
oneself. the philosopher, rethought in this way, cannot be a person
who denies. Rather, this person must be a colonizer of their experi-
ences. Beings of this kind are capable of transforming the world around
them, redeeming culture from its compromised nature by fashioning
from it a sense of purpose that invests life with meaning.
the philosopher of the future will be passionate, a risk taker, a cele-
brator of the intellect, yet capable also of suffering in great measure.27
Above all, they will be capable of affirming their own existence, they will,
in short, be what Nietzsche, returning to terminology reminiscent of The
Birth of Tragedy, will in his mature writings call Dionysian beings. Dionysus,
the figure celebrated in The Birth of Tragedy as the component essential to
the tragic conception of justice, that grand figure of Delphic myth who
is fundamentally an equivocal “tempter god,” thus returns as Nietzsche
now declares himself to be Dionysus’s “last disciple and initiate” (Beyond
Good and Evil, 295). this is a god of subversive authority, for his affirma-
tion involves the defiant denial of the kind of solemnity and pomp that
characterizes the christian God. Dionysus’s power does not rest in the
26 in the context of the Genealogy, this justification involves the entire violent prehistory
of humankind, which put in place the conditions of culture (ii). such a justification verges
on theodicy.
27 “creation – that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s becoming-light.
But that the creator can be, there suffering is necessary and much transformation. Yea,
much bitter dying must be in your life, you creators! thus are you advocates and justifiers
of all transitoriness” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ii, “upon the Blessed isles”).
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dogmatic and doctrinal monotheism of a universal conception of willed

order. Dionysus stands for the pluralistic virtues of dance, exuberance,
experimentation, and temptation. this, in short, is a god for naturalism.
in his self-proclaimed worship of Dionysus Nietzsche affirms transcen-
dence yet spurns metaphysics, for his is a worship marked by its refusal to
point to a “beyond” lying outside the domain of embodied existence.
the Dionysian, as Nietzsche reintroduces it in the mature writings, epito-
mizes creativity – the defining virtue of the philosopher of the future
and the exemplification of what Nietzsche terms the “revaluation of all
values.”28 As with all things creative, one cannot divorce the aesthetic
from it. One should note in this connection a discussion in book 5 of The
Gay Science that draws a distinction between different kinds of works of
art, attitudes of thought, and even architectural design: “All thought,
poetry, painting, compositions, even buildings and sculptures, belong
either to monological art or to art before witnesses” (367). Whereas art
before witnesses gains its value from the role of the spectator, monologi-
cal art requires the kind of “solitude” that, as we have already seen, is for
Nietzsche a condition of creativity.29 As Laurence Lampert has noted,
the view of art presented here exemplifies the aesthetics of solitary exis-
tence, of a mode of life for which the universal God is no longer a living
possibility.30 significantly, however, the god before whom monological
art can be practised is Dionysus, for Dionysus is never a mere witness but
a sign of inspiration and as such a participant in the act of creation.
Dionysian art is needed by those who are creative, by “those who suffer
from the over-fullness of life – they want a Dionysian art and likewise a
tragic view of life, a tragic insight” (The Gay Science, 370).
the Dionysian person and the impoverished soul who requires art
as a palliative to life are differentiated not only by the latter’s demand
for an art that redeems the sufferer. the person who suffers from life
also embraces “logic, the conceptual understandability of existence –
for logic calms and gives confidence – in short, a certain warm narrow-
ness that keeps away fear and encloses one in optimistic horizons.”
28 “And with that i again return to the place from which i set out – The Birth of Tragedy
was my first revaluation of all values … i, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus.”
(Twilight of the Idols, “What i Owe to the Ancients,” 5) Although i do not intend to discuss
it here, it is clear that the complex and sometimes mysterious notion of a “revaluation of
all values” that Nietzsche develops in his late writings is inextricably bound up with his
conception of creation. Dionysus, thiele notes, “is a judge” (Friedrich Nietzsche and the
Politics of the Soul, 202).
29 see section 5.
30 here, Lampert notes, is an aesthetics of a sort “impossible in religion.” see Nietzsche
and Modern Times, 396.
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the creative insight of tragedy is forestalled by the rationalist’s worship

of the concepts that have seized hold of them. in contrast, what the cre-
ative person needs, Nietzsche argues, is the ability to identify, celebrate,
and thereby transfigure the rich and dangerous possibilities of our ani-
mal nature – to step beyond the limitations of concepts even while dwell-
ing within their terrain. the mature Nietzsche thus once again conjoins
the Dionysian and the tragic, affirming tragedy’s unparalleled achieve-
ment of welding expressive force to formal content (see Twilight of the
Idols, “What i Owe to the Ancients,” 5). through this creative synthetic
union one bears witness to “the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaust-
ibility through the sacrifice of its highest types.” And one does so “Not so
as to get rid of pity and terror, not so as to purify oneself of a dangerous
emotion through its vehement discharge … but, beyond pity and terror,
to realize in oneself the eternal joy of becoming” (ibid.). the multifaceted
achievement of Goethe, the figure who from The Birth of Tragedy onwards
Nietzsche admires most and most consistently, encapsulates the possibil-
ity of creation outlined here. For Goethe, a man who, Nietzsche remarks,
as an exemplar of naturalism, a “return to nature … disciplined himself
into a whole, he created himself” (Twilight of the Idols, “skirmishes of an
untimely Man,” 49), the passions, willing, and reason are not separate
spheres, but a created and integrated unity. One must follow this exam-
ple and be cultured and intellectual yet capable of celebrating one’s
embodiment and passions. Only in this way is one capable of the degree
of self-control that enables one to harness and vent the passions to their
fullest creative potential. such a person will be, like Goethe, “a man of
tolerance, not out of weakness, but out of strength … a man for whom
nothing is forbidden, except it be weakness.” A person of this sort “no
longer denies … But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: i have
baptized it with the name Dionysus” (Twilight of the Idols, “What i Owe to
the Ancients,” 5). the Dionysian-oracular element celebrated in The
Birth of Tragedy thus returns in Nietzsche’s later thought as the basis of a
creative, affirmative ethic.
elsewhere, Nietzsche alludes to this faith as “Dionysian pessimism”
(The Gay Science, 370). Dionysian pessimism characterizes the kind of
person that Nietzsche refers to as the “real philosopher” (Beyond Good and
Evil, 211). Like the scholarly “worker-philosopher” with whom Nietzsche
makes a comparison, real philosophers need to possess the discipline
imparted by a demanding education; in a manner akin to the Platonic
philosopher king, they need to climb each rung of the ladder of knowl-
edge. however, the real philosopher passes beyond mere competence
in, for example, epistemology, and turns on the fetishization of such
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things with contempt and scorn.31 human life is not something that at-
tains its zenith in the epistemically-oriented activities of recording, classi-
fying, and theorizing.32 the task of the real philosopher is the task that
exemplifies the Dionysian conception of creativity and freedom. the real
philosopher’s task answers to the demand “that he create values.”33 the
philosophers of the future, who must be counted the prime examples of
“real philosophers,” are different from the philosophical workers because
their task is not one of service. they are creators of rules rather than mere
rule-followers. Real philosophers are “commanders and lawmakers”:
“they say, ‘thus it shall be!’” in other words, the genuine philosopher is
a person whose words and thoughts are deeds. the real philosopher is
characterized by the fact that he or she issues decrees, and it is this ability
to make decrees that reveals a person capable of establishing the
“Whereto?” and “What-for?” of humankind. With creative intent,34
31 “Philosophy reduced to ‘theory of knowledge,’ in fact no more than a timid

epochism and doctrine of abstinence – a philosophy that never gets beyond the threshold
and takes pains to deny itself the right to enter – that is philosophy in its last throes, an end,
an agony, something inspiring pity” (Beyond Good and Evil, 204).
32 such a rejection of the primacy of theory understood in this sense represents a con-
tribution to the task of what charles taylor has called “Overcoming epistemology.” taylor
links this turn in Nietzsche, and its adoption by later writers such as Michel Foucault, to the
notion of “self-making,” i.e. to an aesthetics and ethics of self-creation (see “Overcoming
epistemology,” Philosophical Arguments, 16). this conception of self-creation, i argue, is for
Nietzsche a question of self-legislation.
33 the philosophical labourer’s task, it follows, is limited. the examples Nietzsche prof-
fers of such “philosophical workers” are perhaps surprising, given how deservedly famous
they are: Kant and hegel. such figures, he says, have the formative task of fixing in place,
and expressing in formulas that are easy to assimilate, a great stock of facts about values.
they thereby prepare the ground for the real philosopher in the same way that workers on
a building site establish a building’s foundations, erect its walls, put on its roof, and divide
it up into spaces (rooms). Like the builder, the worker-philosopher creates a space in
which life can be pursued, but human life involves much more than compartmentalizing
things. if that is all there was to it life would be empty. the tasks that can be pursued in
existence do not find their destination in the vision of a well-established and neatly categor-
ized world.
34 Knowledge of the kind envisaged here is essentially productive. it shapes rather than
merely reflects the world. to know the world is to shape it, to fashion our understanding of
it, in new ways and hence to change it. thought, for Nietzsche, would be nothing if it could
not act on its environment. to want to know, to desire truth, means therefore to desire, to
render the world pliable to the shaping power of one’s will. As is argued below, such shap-
ing is not however to be confused with the mere imposition of a capricious subjective force.
the will, for Nietzsche, is normative through and through; it is engaged in its world and
hence constituted in terms of its possibility by the conditions of that world. Freedom, to put
it another way, is never the freedom to do anything you like.
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Nietzsche says, such beings grasp toward the future, “and all that is and
has been becomes a means for them, an instrument, a hammer. their
‘knowing’ is creating, their creating is a legislation, their will to truth is –
will to power” (Beyond Good and Evil, 211).35
the invocation of the will to truth in this last passage should not be
passed over. the legitimacy of creating, knowing, and law-giving as
Nietzsche conceives of them depends upon the existence of the will to
truth. Nietzsche, as we have seen, holds us to be animals whose concep-
tual abilities are pragmatically useful but subject to profound error and
injustice. conceptual thought is a kind of violence. in so far as metaphys-
ics has cleaved to the concept of truth it has epitomized and unwittingly
celebrated this violence and thereby slipped ever further into error. the
anti-naturalist metaphysician seeks a stable reality in the realms of idea
and substance, and clings uncritically to the concept of being. the meta-
physician thereby asks too much of truth, for he or she asks it to do
something for which it is not equipped. truth talk cannot legitimately
aspire to the heavens. Metaphysics is our unconditional desire for truth
(our will to truth) run amok and reified as absolutism. truth, when it
becomes the object of this theoretical fetishism, is the worst of delusions.
Nietzsche seeks to overturn the power of this delusion not merely in the
realm of philosophy but in thought generally. the thought-image
Nietzsche seeks to cultivate represents a revolution. however, in formu-
lating his conception of the creative, Dionysian law-giver, Nietzsche
neither craves nor asks us to step outside the domain of the will to
truth. Like many other human traits, the desire for truth has become
constitutive of our nature to such a degree that an attempt simply to
negate and thereby step beyond it would achieve nothing more than a
delusory and parodic re-enactment of the errors of metaphysics. What
the Dionysian future philosopher represents, rather, is a critique of the
will to truth that is to be enacted within its horizon. We must always, as
35 the will to truth is in reality a will to power. it is the “will to the thinkability of all be-
ings … You want to make all being thinkable.” the desire is that the world shall be mastered
by thought and concept. the will of the wisest people is a will that seeks to set up a world to
be venerated. “Your will and your valuations you have placed on the river of becoming …
Now the river carries your bark further; it has to carry it … Not the river is your danger and
the end of your good and evil, you who are wisest, but that will itself, the will to power – the
unexhausted procreative will of life” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ii, “On self-Overcoming”).
One should note in this context how power, legislation, and politics come together in
Nietzsche’s thought, the way that “Nietzsche’s re-articulation of the ‘political’ is expressed
as the organizational complexification of materiality (of bodies, knowledges, power). After
all, Dionysus – Nietzsche reminds us – is a legislator” (Mellamphy, The Three Stigmata of
Friedrich Nietzsche, 121).
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Nietzsche reminds us in the opening of Beyond Good and Evil, live within
the ambit of thought delineated by the will to truth: “the will to truth …
is still going to tempt us on many a hazardous enterprise” in the same
way as it has already raised many dangerous questions so far. the narra-
tive may already seem a long one, but it is more likely that “it has only just
begun?” (1). We are, in other words, only at the beginning of the journey
initiated by the desire for truth. to embark upon this journey, Nietzsche
argues, requires we accede to the demand that we radically question the
notion of truth and our very desire for it in ever more rigorous ways, but
without ever letting go of the desire itself.36
if the genuine philosopher is a law-giver,37 then their law-giving is
characterized as much by what it is not entitled to enact as by what is
open to it, for Nietzsche refuses us the right to transcend the problem-
atic of truth and all that goes with it in simplistic fashion. As he com-
ments in The Gay Science (344), we are obliged to remain pious if we want
to be rigorous about what we know and value. What is at stake with re-
gard to the matter of truth is not something external to us but something
intrinsic to human identity and self-understanding. All knowledge in-
volves presupposition as its condition of possibility – it presupposes val-
ues, esteeming. As long as i want knowledge i have already affirmed in
advance the value of my knowing and of the truths that such knowing
will yield. here an “unconditional will to truth” can be interpreted self-
reflexively. the will to truth does not attain its end in the condition of
wanting not to be deceived about the world of matters of fact. Rather, it
can be developed and refined so as to signify the desire to affirm above
all else not whether this or that fact is true but rather the value of the at-
titude of truthfulness itself. the desire for truth, when grasped in these
terms, denotes the active desire not to allow oneself to be subject to
36 this, of course, is speaking as if we could ever let go of such a desire – something to

which, perhaps, the “last man” might aspire. Plato’s contention that truth is divine may,
Nietzsche notes, turn out to be “our most enduring lie” (The Gay Science, 344). We are, in
other words, trapped within the problematic of truth. truth talk is something one cannot
get away from and, so long as one cleaves to a certain modesty when engaging in such talk,
there is no reason to want to do so. But, Nietzsche insists, to do so honestly means recogniz-
ing this talk as a condition of talk, not of how things are. What matters in this view is com-
munication, the establishment of common conventions of designation, not the question as
to whether such conventions and the signs associated with them can be nailed on to reality
by recourse to a single principle or method.
37 in this regard my reading accords with that of Mellamphy: “the philosopher is not
the executive or ruling element, but its legislator or lawgiver (its spiritual justification).”
such a person “is not a statesman that administers nomos; rather he gives the law to which
the rest of society is bound to adhere” (The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche, 97).
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delusion with regard to the nature and status of one’s beliefs and hence
values: “‘will to truth’ does not mean ‘i will not allow myself to be de-
ceived’ but – there is no alternative – ‘i will not deceive, not even myself’;
and with that we stand on moral ground” (ibid.). Prudential considerations
(e.g. that one does not want to be the victim of deception because decep-
tion has bad consequences) cannot therefore fully explain the will to
truth when its significance is comprehended properly. Nature, which ac-
cidentally brought about an animal desirous of truth, is now mastered by
the culture that sprang from it. the affirmation of the demand for truth
and an ethical commitment to be self-critical about one’s values and be-
liefs go hand in hand. in so far as we are driven by the desire not to de-
ceive we are obliged to be creatures of the virtues.
Our highest virtue, then, is honesty. With this observation, Nietzsche
conjures an image of humanity pitted against the fundamental condi-
tion of existence, which is a plurality of simulacra, but now in a manner
whose significance is transformed. We may be subject to illusion but, as
Nietzsche argues from Human, All Too Human onwards,38 we are capable
of comprehending this possibility. Rendered explicit in this way, the will
to truth is revealed as something that needs to be subject to a “critique”
capable of refashioning it in a productive manner (Genealogy, iii, 24).
Nietzsche does not mean that the will to truth must be criticized relent-
lessly; rather, he is proffering the possibility of a critique akin to that
performed by Kantian thought. this is a critique that has as its goal the
exploration of the domain of the will to truth with a view to establishing
its value and limits. in short, what is needed is an engagement with the
question of the value of truth that takes place within its own sphere,
namely, the sphere of thought and existence that the will to truth has
fashioned out of us. since we are also moderns, a critique of this kind
is initiated by naturalism and the honest atheism associated with it
(Genealogy, iii, 27).
9. The philosophers of the future are reversers of “timeless” values, figures who re-
veal the temporal precondition of all esteeming. This demythologization of value is
the precondition of creative philosophical freedom. Such freedom may seem strange
given Nietzsche’s emphasis upon constraint and limitation. The latter, however, is
the precondition of creative possibility, for creation cannot take place without a
context and a channelling of forces. Creative law-giving of the kind Nietzsche envis-
ages is the sign of attained selfhood. The self may be the most recent of culture’s in-
ventions but, properly understood, it is for Nietzsche the one most worthy of esteem.
38 Human, All Too Human, 32. see the discussion at the beginning of chapter 2.
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The self is the body and the body is always already a body-politic, a miniature polis
or “commonwealth.” Embodiment involves the co-ordination of heterogeneous ele-
ments; the body’s organizational principles cannot be deduced, for it is synthetic. It
is a structure in which willing makes itself manifest and does so in the form of
values. This is the case for individual and community alike. In the case of the in-
dividual, however, the communal origins of valuing are transformed by self-reflex-
ivity. Self-reflexivity is not defined by consciousness (which is a necessary but not
sufficient condition of it). Consciousness originated in communal life and the need
of the body (first communal, then individuated) to bear witness to its acts. The body
is the self, an order of commanding and obeying governed by a “great reason” that
relates together the self’s acts, values, and environment. Consciousness (the “I”)
bears witness to this relation. Consciousness is not, as it has traditionally been
taken to be, the source of agency. Personhood is not the same as the “I.” The self es-
teems and the “I” bears witness to this, making manifest the self’s esteeming habits.
The “I,” however, makes self-misunderstanding possible, for it gives rise to a ten-
dency on the part of the self to think its identity in terms of consciousness only. This
error is an inversion of the self’s order of command – it gives rise to the illusory no-
tion of freedom as absence of compulsion. Genuine freedom, however, is empower-
ment; it is revealed in the feeling of power experienced when one is one’s own
commander and subject. Power is the source of freedom and creativity. It is not a
given but something in need of continual attainment. Freedom is a matter of deeds;
it is lived as the unity of thought and action. Simply acceding to the law, to the
norm, is not being free. Convention must be transcended. Such transcendence does
not negate our normative nature any more than it licenses the rule of whim and
caprice. It is, rather, the sublimation of convention, custom, and law.
the image of philosophy’s highest potential that Nietzsche presents us

with remains one wedded to a figure locked into the future. As such, his
ideal of philosophy is epitomized by a conception of humanity intent on
envisaging not what it is but what it can become (see On the Genealogy of
Morality, iii, 13). the project of historical philosophy initiated in Human,
All Too Human thereby abides by pointing beyond itself. creation re-
quires a specific kind of relationship with temporality. the “new philoso-
phers” (Beyond Good and Evil, 203) will be creatures who dare to overturn,
“revalue and reverse ‘eternal values.’” theirs, in other words, will be a
task that involves a form of creating and legislating that reaches both
forward to the question of what can be and back into the past in such a
way that the significance of what has been is transformed. the “eternal”
must be dragged back down to earth and history; the absolute must be
revealed as concealed contingency. Only then will the kind of freedom
Nietzsche aspires to be possible. From some standpoints this creation
will seem to be destructive since it will involve undermining what has
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hitherto been taken for granted about the realm of values. Likewise, this
freedom will seem to some like lack of freedom, since it is a freedom that
is not afraid of the constraints that are necessary to its possibility.
Philosophy, properly understood, expresses this freedom. it is about
invention, about the creation of values, about commanding. in so far as
the genuine philosopher is a law-giving animal, he or she is a being that
has attained creative selfhood. the self, as already noted, emerges as the
most recent invention of culture, as a consequence of the power of
norms to fashion the body (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i, “On the thousand
and One Goals”). the body, Nietzsche argues, is the self, and the self is a
sublimated community or, as he puts it, a “commonwealth.” this com-
monwealth is a co-ordinated assemblage consisting of diverse elements.
the unity of these elements does not depend upon any a priori princi-
ples, it cannot be deduced; rather, it springs from a synthetic ordering
which occurs in the same manner as a political community assembles,
co-ordinates, and distributes the diversity of elements (bodies, things,
time, and the like) that make it what it is. “[O]ur body is but a social
construction of many souls” that operates in the same manner as “every
well built and happy political community” (Beyond Good and Evil, 19). in
such a community the element that commands, “the ruling class,” associ-
ates itself with what is successful about that community. this is how the
self wills, for it is the case that with “all willing it is absolutely a question
of commanding and obeying.” in the individuated self as in any political
community or culture, the condition of creation is the source of value.
Just as a community affirms itself in the act of valuing and adhering to
values (which means by observing norms and thereby generating com-
munal identity) so the individual does, too. in the community, however,
the act of valuing is unconscious. the community’s normatively fash-
ioned members simply act without a thought on the basis of what is val-
ued (the norm that dictates the nature of the good). in the individual
that is fashioned out of these norms this condition is open to being trans-
formed (indeed, transfigured) by self-reflexivity.39
As is already clear from the discussion above,40 selfhood and individ-
uality are not, however, essentially characterized by way of conscious-
ness. self-reflexivity involves consciousness (the “i”) but consciousness,
for Nietzsche, is not to be confused with the source of self-reflexivity.
39 Although this does not mean that this must necessarily happen. the emergence of
the individuated self is not a guaranteed consequence of normative orders. it is a contin-
gent possibility. One of Nietzsche’s later concerns centres on creating the conditions
whereby the possibility of such an outcome is enhanced.
40 see section 2.
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consciousness is a necessary but not sufficient condition of self-reflexivity.

the self is embodiment, an amalgam of drives co-ordinated into in-
stincts, fashioned through the observance of customs and traditions into
a being of self-reflexive possibilities. consciousness thus originates in
shared communal conditions. the “i” emerges as a witness and inter-
preter in service of the body, first communal and then individual; it is an
expression of the body’s productive interpretive abilities. the body –
which for Nietzsche is the self – is, like the community it emerges from,
an order of command, a hierarchy organized around the demands of
the “great reason”41 that co-ordinates its dealings with its environment.42
the “i” is the aspect of the self that bears witness to the self’s doings and
comes about because, in our origins, we are communal creatures who
are forced to deal with others like us. the “i” is a kind of feedback mech-
anism that assists these dealings. it is a product of normativity, but
amongst philosophers the “i” and consciousness are the most misunder-
stood things. to misunderstand consciousness is to take it as the source
of agency, that is, as a kind of commander and law-giver in relation to the
self. For Nietzsche, however, such sovereignty does not come from the
“i.” consciousness is not sovereign but subject. its true role is to bear wit-
ness to the self’s esteeming habits and their relation to the events that
befall it as it journeys through life, to press this relation into form by re-
presenting to the self what it esteems. the “i” thus speaks the language
of the self’s engagement with its environment, the language of values.
the “i” is in this regard akin to the voice. the voice is part of the self:
crudely, it springs from vocal chords resonating air in the service of ex-
pression. Yet, this mere vibration of gases invokes personality – a disem-
bodied voice can conjure for us the rich terrain of a whole person, even
if this person never gets to be seen, or is a delusion or fantasy.43 Likewise,
the “i” is a kind of vibration of the self, a peculiar resonating brought
about by a co-ordination of forces (social and embodied) that are supe-
rior to it; but it is not proper to consider it on its own to be a “who,” a
person. the “i” conjures the person, but is not equivalent to him or her.
the “i” is conjured in a manner that tends to the self’s concealment
and self-misinterpretation, for the “i’s” role as re-presenter gives rise to a
confusion of order concerning the relation between voice and utterer,
commanded and commander. this inversion of the order of command
41 see note 5.
42 Müller-Lauter charts the development of notions of commanding and equality in
Nietzsche’s thought. thus, human identity arises from a synthesis of heterogeneous ele-
ments that culminates in the “great reason” of the body (see Friedrich Nietzsche, 179).
43 the same goes for the “tone” of a text – this text, for example.
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creates the peculiar demand that calls for “freedom” in the sense of “free
from.” Freedom of this kind is characteristic of the ideal of something
commanded: it sees freedom as the absence of compulsion, as the nega-
tion of command, a “peace” defined in terms of a lack of interference by
the intrusive force of a greater power. the self thereby creates illusions
that seduce it to envision an ideal that is counter to its genuine nature.
to be “free to,” which is the freedom that zarathustra celebrates, is to
celebrate the empowerment of the embodied self in all its co-ordinated
diversity. it is to find in commanding and being commanded at one and
the same time the fulfilment of one’s nature. Being free in this sense
means not merely being able to celebrate one’s own embodiment and
interpretive abilities but being willing to face the ultimately dangerous
condition of creativity that such interpretive abilities truly signify. since,
for Nietzsche, we are the evaluating animal – since, in other words, evalu-
ation is our most characteristic creation – our greatest potential springs
from the creative possibilities open to us with regard to the values we
find ourselves empowered to create. creation is human productivity;44 it
springs from the will as the result of the prehistoric fashioning by custom
and law of our rule-following nature.45 the consequence of this fashion-
ing is an animal equipped with the potential to discover and unleash its
own willing power. this power is the source of freedom, but freedom as
it is understood here is not a mere condition that simply springs from
humankind being what it is. Freedom is not a given, something we sim-
ply have because we are who we are; it must be struggled for, attained,
and struggled for and attained yet again. this struggle must be continu-
al. Freedom is not found like a thing; it is lived. thus, the potential we
have for freedom is not the same as being free. the normative fashion-
ing that characterizes humanity’s emergence as a being of law-like pro-
pensities means being an observer of the law, but simply observing the
law does not make us free. in the same way that normativity is a necessary
44 eugen Fink notes the aesthetic element inherent in this conception: “Man’s essence
resides in the ‘productive man,’ in the man who creates. With this expression, Nietzsche
does not refer to the ‘worker’ in industrial society nor to the producers of our modern
technological world, but rather to the artists, the thinkers and poets, the lawgivers and
heroic founders of states. Nietzsche’s image of man as a ‘predator,’ which was formulated
in defiance of christianity and all philanthropic ‘humanism,’ soon becomes an aesthetic-
ally defined naturalness” (“Nietzsche’s New experience of the World,” in Nietzsche’s New
Seas, 205). to repeat the point made above, in so far as creation, as Nietzsche conceives it,
turns on the notion of the artistic, we are returned in his later writings to the domain of the
oracular outlined in The Birth of Tragedy.
45 see Genealogy, ii, 2ff.
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condition of social relations and the conflicts, struggles, and stalemates

that gives rise to “justice talk,”46 so the discipline of observing the cus-
tomary, the law as it is handed down to us, is a condition of possible free-
dom. creation means going beyond what is conventional, reinterpreting
the stipulations of law as it now stands and thereby overcoming it.
As has been noted, however, such creation for Nietzsche does not in-
volve a transcendence of the conditions that constitute our normative
nature. Being creative and free means becoming the source of the legiti-
macy of one’s judgements. this does not mean that one must become a
petty tyrant, prey to subjective whim. the law-giving Nietzsche advocates
is not to be confused with wilful imposition of power. to think thus would
be to misunderstand not only what creation is, but the nature of power
and command and freedom itself. the “nature of the living” is character-
ized by commanding and obeying (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ii, “On self-
Overcoming”), but neither commanding nor acceding to command
mean anything when considered in isolation. that which is commanded
also commands when it can, and if one commands it is because one is
amenable to being commanded, too, since that which commands also
obeys and is driven to do so as a consequence of its commanding. there is no
commanding without obeying and vice versa. in the case of “the weaker,”
it is a matter of taking what it can from that which is more powerful and
using it as a means of attaining a sense of command. in the case of the
“greatest,” that which commands, this also is compelled to obey and
hence be subject to its own laws. to be powerful enough to create values
means to risk oneself, to render oneself accountable.
creativity thus entails responsibility. One must, as this source of
law-giving, also become one’s own most severe critic and judge. Like
christianity, one must subject oneself to the law one has made. the free-
dom of the creator is not an escape from law and constraint. it is, rather,
their development and refinement through making explicit about
norms, customs, and constraints what has been hitherto hidden about
them, and doing so in the very domain fashioned by norm and custom.
One overcomes the power of normative imposition by revealing its con-
tingency, by showing in other words that it is a product of history and
nature and that it lacks a transcendent justification. But the legacy of
this history is not lost. it is not a matter of seeking to step beyond the
domain of the will to truth. One must taken possession of the will to
truth. the creative person thus overcomes the law by entering into and
46 see chapter 3.
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transforming it, not by stepping over it or going around it. And they do
so by a kind of colonization that is also an internalization: by taking what
is initially experienced as external imposition and making it their own.
10. Genuine creation is the bestowing of values. In bestowing values the creator
thereby takes risks. The creator’s vulnerability shows that for Nietzsche the power of
creation is not the simple imposition of the stronger on the weaker. New values are
new competences that sublimate the values of the past and thereby overcome them
and so fashion the possibility of a new justice. A new justice is a new sense of what
constitutes legitimacy and right. The creator of values is a lawgiver. Their legisla-
tion is revealed in commanding, but such creative commanding is never pure
force. Creation has a peculiar authority. Creative esteeming transforms the nature
of hitherto taken for granted significances. It commands us because it changes us,
colonizing, fashioning, and transforming the social realm of meaning and self-
understanding. The creator is an experimenter who shatters the notion of a uni-
versal “law” and “justice” by subverting them with pluralistic experimentalism.
Nietzsche’s experimentalism holds justice to be the overcoming of revenge. Justice,
for Nietzsche, refuses to judge in the universal terms characteristic of conformist
conventional morality. It hopes thereby to liberate the world from the cruelty of
moral condemnation, spurning the notion of a timeless “good and evil.” Nietzsche
does not advocate destroying ethics as such. He does not spurn the value judge-
ments “good” and “bad.” What is good is an attitude of mercy and understanding
toward what is unconventional; what is bad is cruelty toward it. In this way jus-
tice is done to even the most “evil” human being, who as an instance of our kind
is to be greeted as something astonishing and worthy of the humanizing respect
that characterizes mercy.
it is not enough for the creator simply to take what life has given them.
Genuine creation, as the opening of Zarathustra reminds us, involves giv-
ing. A creator is a bestower, a giver of values, someone who experiments
with new ways of esteeming. Neither is it sufficient merely to give values
in the same way as one might casually give someone a birthday present.
in the latter case, the relation between giver and gift is limited: the thing
given is soon enough forgotten, for little is at stake in the giving beyond
the mere observation of a convention. the creator-giver, however, must
be a living exemplar: he or she must affirm life in the living of values; he
or she must give of themselves. this brings risks, for in the giving of val-
ues one places oneself at peril from the scorn of those who crave conser-
vative conformity: “Do you, my brother, yet know the word ‘contempt’?
And the agony of your justice – being just to those who have contempt
for you? … You came close to them and yet passed by: that they will never
forgive … ‘how will you be just [Gerecht] to me?’ you must say. ‘i choose
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your injustice [Ungerechtigkeit] as my proper lot.’ injustice and filth they

throw after the lonely one … And beware of the good and the just!
they like to crucify those who invent their own virtue for themselves –
they hate the lonely one” (Zarathustra, i, “On the Way of the creator”).
As the above passage reveals, Nietzsche does not consider creative power
to be merely a matter of the strongest imposing something on the weak.47
the creator as he or she is presented here does not possess overwhelm-
ing force; they are vulnerable, as susceptible to becoming a victim as
christ – they run the risk of paying for their wisdom by being crucified
for it.48 A person of this kind is also, zarathustra adds, at the same time
their own worst enemy. the creator must be a lover of himself and hence
also a self-despiser – one whose self-love acts as a spur to self-transcen-
dence, a person who wishes to create because what they are dissatisfies
them, because their love for humanity means that they feel they must be
more. creation is sheer risk and vulnerability.
through risking oneself one creates values.49 One thereby fashions a
way, a new competence, through which the ways of the past, the old val-
ues, are transfigured. the fruits of creation are not immediate, they take
47 in this regard, my reading has close affinities with comments made by Wolfgang
Müller-Lauter. Müller-Lauter, quoting heidegger, notes that “for Nietzsche there ‘can be
no sheer overpowering, no sheer empowering of the will to power, because for him all will-
ing is a willing something.’ the overman wants power ‘absolutely,’ that is, in unrestricted
dominance. But he can achieve and exercise power only if he grasps it in its conditional-
ities” (Friedrich Nietzsche, 80). Power cannot therefore be desired as such, since it is always
the power to do such-and-such, i.e. “freedom to.”
48 terry eagleton draws a contrast between Nietzsche’s conception and Aristotle’s simi-
larly conceived great-souled man in precisely these terms: “the Overman is a supremely
positive being, overflowing with rude health and joie de vivre. Yet he differs most fundamen-
tally from Aristotle’s great-souled man in the terrible price he must pay for his eternal yea-
saying. it is … the recognition that there is no truth, no essences, no identities, no grounds,
no ends or inherent values in the world … the Overman is he who plucks virtue from dire
necessity, converting the groundlessness of reality into an occasion for aesthetic delight
and a source of unceasing self-invention … bountiful and generous-spirited, but with the
fine, carefree nonchalance of the nobleman” (Trouble with Strangers, 178–9). As eagleton
goes on to note, in wonderfully deflating style, one rather disappointing consequence of
this is that thus understood the overman comes to look more like an “old-style aristocrat”
who is “less a demonic figure than a character out of Disraeli.”
49 A case in point is socrates. According to Nietzsche, socratic moralism runs counter
to the dominant social ethos of the ancient social milieu from which he springs, for con-
trary to the norms of his time socrates brings the individual to the centre of moral dis-
course (Daybreak, 9). the degree to which socratism has been triumphant is reflected by
the seeming naturalness of its dictum that virtue harmonizes with self-interest. socrates, via
Plato, is in this sense legislative: his thought constitutes the dominant mode of moral dis-
course in the West. One need not dwell on his fate too long to consider the price he paid
for his achievement.
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time. And the fruits bear the stamp of a new justice: “Go into your loneli-
ness with your love and with your creation, my brother; and only much
later will justice limp after you” (Zarathustra, i, “On the Way of the
creator”). the formalistic “justice” of the “the good and the just” is mere
conformism, narrow and alien to creativity. in contrast, Nietzsche con-
siders justice in the broadest and richest sense to be something that fol-
lows only after creation. Justice and creation go together in so far as only
after the creation of values is justice, in one form or another, truly pos-
sible. such justice transcends the current world of everyday concerns
and it is this antagonistic relation to the everyday that confirms its oracu-
lar nature. Justice of this kind refashions conceptions of legitimacy and
right; and it does so first by being alien to them, then supplanting them
and finally taking possession of their domain for itself. the meaning of
justice, in other words, is not fixed in advance. its meaning is something
that must be ceaselessly explored and worked through, since it is subject
to the same kind of reinterpretation that the concept of punishment is.
What kind of commanding and law-giving does Nietzsche have in
mind when he discusses the task of philosophical creativity in these
terms? how is such creative legislation actually possible? clearly, as has
already been argued, such creativity does not step beyond the bounds of
sense, beyond the terrain of the will to truth that constitutes its possibil-
ity. Nor is it the mere imposition of arbitrary “laws” upon a weak and
vulnerable body that is simply subjected to the unyielding force of a su-
perior will. commanding of the creative kind is never mere forcing. it is
the meeting of that which wishes to command and can with that which is
amenable to being commanded. the creator is capable of legislation
because genuine creation is made manifest by its being legislative in its
effects, by what is commanded acceding to the authority of its command.
the inventor’s creativity endows a peculiar authority: creative thought
transforms significance, fashions the realm of possible meaning and in
this way, slowly and sometimes imperceptibly and without fuss, changes
things. Above all, it changes us in such a way that we can no longer
simply think and do as we once thought and did. creation is compel-
ling. But its compulsion, however monstrous it might seem from some
standpoints, is never mere violence or intimidation. Genuine invention
moulds us, colonizes us, and thereby becomes constitutive of us. the
creator renders us different from how we were precisely to the extent
that we are amenable to such rendering. creation fashions the social
domain and the self; it transforms self-understanding and thereby doer
and deed. A passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, later appended to the
conclusion of Twilight of the Idols, is revealing in this regard:
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“Why so hard?” the kitchen-coal once said to the diamond. “After

all, are we not close kin?”
Why so soft, my brothers, i ask you, for are we not brothers?
Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial,
self-denial, in your hearts? so little destiny in your eyes?
And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how
can you triumph with me?
And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut and cut
through, how can you one day create with me?
For creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to im-
press your hand on millennia as on wax,
Blessedness to write on the will of millennia as on bronze – harder
than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether
hard.
this new tablet, oh my brothers, i place over you: become hard!
(Zarathustra, iii, “On Old and New tablets,” 29)
the creator is a person driven by an imperative, by an “ought” that they

must embody: he or she must “become hard.” What this hardness amounts
to is not immediately explicit. in the passage there are two elements that
recall the discussion of commanding and being commanded earlier in
the text (Zarathustra, ii, “On self-Overcoming”).50 First, there is that
which is acted upon, which yields not because it cannot resist but be-
cause it is suited to being fashioned; it is willing. second, there is that
which is active, that which is drawn to what is willing to yield to it. What
acts does so in a manner that appears positive, elemental, physical, deci-
sive, as an expression of purpose: the creative urge “flashes” knife-like
through material, dividing and slicing. the creative hand impresses itself
upon the world and through this it reveals the latter to be as receptive
and co-operative to the power of expression as wax is to the candle mak-
er. creation is inscription and such inscription is a kind of union, some-
thing demanded no less by what is inscribed upon as by what does the
inscribing. it is here that Nietzsche’s earlier oracular conception of jus-
tice is most fully rearticulated in historical and naturalistic terms. What
is invented, in so far as it is genuine invention, is “written” on to the topo-
graphical field of history, rendering it something that bears the mysteri-
ous impress of the creator. the inventor is a transformer of the will,
hence also a transformer of dominant modes of self-interpretation. the
50 this is discussed in section 9.
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creator, in other words, is a person capable of endowing the human

world with sense. such endowments of sense transform our relationship
with our own times and ourselves. they represent a search for “new ori-
gins” (Zarathustra, iii, “On Old and New tablets,” 25). Origins of this
kind endow sense for they liberate us from the world of tradition and the
customary by revealing hitherto undisclosed realms of human possibility.
the creator reveals a path to a new way of thinking, doing, and hence
evaluating. this is a person able to satisfy the human desire for meaning;
one who offers a sense of purpose that redeems the contingent and
threatened individual by situating them within an encompassing, justifi-
catory narrative. in the person who coins values social order finds its
fulfilment because it is furthered thereby. the sphere of “human soci-
ety,” zarathustra tells us, is “an experiment” without end (ibid.). the
creator is the experimenter par excellence, the being who fulfils “the long
quest,” for organizing principles that characterizes the history of social
order. What Nietzsche holds to be a just situation can emerge only on the
basis of this experimental condition. social order, zarathustra adds, can
hence never be a “contract.” No compact or agreement exists that is not
worthy of being broken. What is just contravenes the norm; it shatters
the given law in its pursuit of a new articulation of ways of living.
Precisely how the law as it stands is shattered by Nietzsche’s justice is
revealed by the passage in the Genealogy that ponders the possibility of a
society that has become “so conscious of its power” that it comes to embrace
mercy (Genealogy, ii, 10, cited above). As in his earlier writings, here, too,
real justice is mercy. A philosophy of creation, one that dares to go be-
yond good and evil, also transcends the formalism of legalistic concep-
tions of justice by revealing leniency to be at its heart. the person who
shows mercy is not worried about expense or equivalence; they do not
calculate the value of things according to their own advantage, they do
not show resentment, but rather shrug off disadvantage with a forgive-
ness that refuses even to make the wrongdoer feel like a wrongdoer. if
you are attacked by an enemy, zarathustra says, do not pay back his evil
by being kind and good to him or her, for that fills the enemy with shame
and enmity. it is better to show the wrongdoer that they have done you a
favour, that you are capable of gaining from their act, that the evil deed has
good consequences for you – indeed, even the lesser and more immediate
response of cursing is better than “blessing” in such cases (Zarathustra, i,
“On the Adder’s Bite”). if there has to be punishment then it must not
be done on the basis of the cold calculation of revenge, but out of recog-
nition of the wrongdoer’s being more than simply a sinner and villain.
Judgement is better when it shows respect for the miscreant, which
means accepting him or her for what they are and refusing the dubious
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pleasure of finding reasons to condemn them. Only the one who wants
to judge deserves judgement: “i do not like your cold justice; and out of
the eyes of your judges there always looks the executioner and his cold
steel. tell me, where is that justice which is love with open eyes? Would
that you might invent for me the love that bears not only all punishment
but also all guilt! Would that you might invent for me the justice that
acquits everyone, except him that judges!” (ibid.). Justice here refuses to
judge in casually universalistic fashion. it goes beyond the mere applica-
tion of the rule in search of the creation of new rules that acknowledge
the ultimate innocence of all, for no one is guilty for being who they
have become. such justice would thus rather liberate all miscreants rath-
er than license the vengeful desire to hold others to account.
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6
Revaluation and Beyond
1. The 1886 preface to human, All too human characterizes the “revaluation
of values” in terms of the pursuit of freedom. Freedom demands one be the strongest
critic of one’s own “virtues.” It requires one grasp that a degree of injustice is a
necessary ingredient even of what one esteems most. Justice, Nietzsche holds, needs
to be rethought in light of the recognition that life is characterized most essentially
by its multiplicity. There is a multiplicity of possible ways of living, each of which
expresses a partial and restricted perspective on the whole. This restriction, which
rules over every form of life, reveals why each is necessarily unjust to some degree.
The more threatened (or, in Nietzsche’s terms, “weak” and “meagre”) a form of life
(i.e. a culture or community) is, the more inclined it will be to regard itself as pro-
viding the yardstick of truth and reality. All life occurs only in virtue of limita-
tions. These combine with humanity’s communally generated capacity for
self-reflexivity to create in every culture a tendency to view its dominant perspective
as universal and absolute. The “weaker” a culture, the more threatened and abso-
lutist it will be inclined to become as recourse to self-defence. The greatest injustice
is therefore perpetrated against existence by what is most limited, turned in on itself
and lacking in possibility. The very difference necessary to life thereby gives rise to
conditions antagonistic to it. Such antagonism is exemplified for Nietzsche by
priestly values. This standpoint allows Nietzsche to identify the object of his final
and most vehement polemic: the Christian church. The church, according to
Nietzsche, is a dictatorship of anti-experimentalism that seeks to impose its own
values and eliminate the essential difference and ensuing conflict that is a condi-
tion of life. Nietzsche’s late texts seek to celebrate and thereby do justice to the mul-
tiplicity that, for him, characterizes the economy of life. This celebration entails
going beyond “morality” (the rule of convention and the norm) in pursuit of a
vision of humanity capable of revelling in its own self-surpassing finitude. In do-
ing justice to life in this way Nietzsche proclaims himself as an ethical thinker.
Freedom is the precondition of this ethical life, which is a form of thinking beyond
the confines of the norm that allows the creative possibilities of pluralism to be
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Revaluation and Beyond 197
affirmed through the insight achieved by attaining power over one’s own values.
Revaluation is the precondition of attaining such power.
eight years after the publication of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche
takes a backward glance and ruminates on the beginnings of his natural-
istic turn. in the preface added to the 1886 second edition of the text he
argues that Human, All Too Human is most essentially characterized by
two things. First, there is the free spirit and his or her pursuit of liberty
of thought. second, the work itself is a kind of scarred testimony to the
costs of pursuing such liberty. in its striving for intellectual freedom,
Nietzsche tells us, Human, All Too Human bears witness to the necessity of
trauma. it reveals that someone who wants to be free must be prepared
to pay a painful price for his or her empowerment. the pursuit of free-
dom obliges a person to turn against what he or she cherishes. One must
become a despiser and hater of what have hitherto been one’s “virtues.”1
Only in this way can values be rendered pliable to the demand of the
“higher goal” of elucidating “the problem of the order of rank” (Human
All Too Human, Preface, 6). this demand concerns what Nietzsche comes
to elucidate in the Genealogy and elsewhere as the task of performing a
“revaluation of values.”2
in this transformed relationship to what we esteem, our virtues take
on a new meaning. As one achieves lordship over one’s “For and
Against,” what one endorses and what one resists, values cease to be
mere inclinations; they come to serve rather than enslave. the freedom
of mastery, in other words, involves creating a counter-thought that con-
tradicts the power of prevailing norms to act only as unquestioningly
obeyed directives. the acquisition of this lordship of thought requires
learning one thing above all else. One must come to appreciate that the
ability to have any command over one’s values has its source in the cul-
tivation of an understanding of the perspectival element essential in all
evaluation. it is necessary to understand, in other words, that all values
are tentative and partial expressions of ways of living, that there is no
grand moral path to reality and truth. For this reason, “the displace-
ment, the distortion and merely apparent teleology of horizons and
whatever else pertains to perspectivism,” including a self-reflexive aware-
ness of the “intellectual penalty” that one must pay for being able to
think at all, present themselves most forcibly only to the liberated
1 One should recall here the “great contempt” discussed in Zarathustra (i, “zarathustra’s
Prologue,” 3). see chapter 5 for a discussion of this.
2 see, for example, the discussion Nietzsche offers in the last section of the first essay
of the Genealogy. see also the discussion below.
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person. the person who seeks freedom is obliged constantly to recall

that humanity is an unjust animal, that a quantum of “necessary injustice
[nothwendige Ungerechtigkeit]” is inescapable. From whatever standpoint
one may approach it, this element of injustice is “irremovable from life,”
since “life itself” is “conditioned by the perspectival and its injustice.”3
this does not force us to the conclusion that one must therefore simply
shrug one’s shoulders and give up on the pursuit of justice or abandon
oneself to an indulgent subjectivism.4 this insight is a beginning, not an
end. the point is that justice is not to be taken as a given, as something
inherent in the order of things and already achieved. it must be pursued
and, given the above limitation, pursued in a new way. What is needed is
the cultivation of the ethic of mercy and creation discussed in the previ-
ous chapter.
Life is a plurality and plenitude of experiments in living. such experi-
ments, however, occur in each and every case as something small, par-
ticular, and aggressively restrictive. Life, in other words, always already
and only happens in virtue of necessarily imposed limitations. this nar-
row condition, combined with the originally communally generated ca-
pacity for self-reflexivity and self-criticism, constitutes the constant threat
of injustice that plagues human existence, since it gives rise to a misun-
derstanding. each culture and the values it embodies is a limited and
partial expression of the rich range of possibilities that constitutes life;
but every evaluative tendency is at the same time powerfully inclined to
take itself and its standards of value to be universal and absolute.5 to this
point Nietzsche adds the further observation that the more “meagre” the
form of life, the more inclined it is to conceive of itself and its hierarchy
of values in totalizing terms.6 Absolutism, in other words, is often a kind
3 “das Leben selbst als bedingt durch das Perspektivische und seine Ungerechtigkeit.”
4 the subject is, in any case, a socially constituted entity, for Nietzsche; so any possible
abandonment to an autonomous “inner world” of the self, cartesian style, is a non-starter.
5 Witness the tendencies cultures have to consider themselves as representing a kind
of realization of what precedes them, or has having a world-historical role in the order of
things. the British empire (with its conception of “civilization” – a view epitomized by J.s.
Mill’s discussion of other cultures in their “nonage” standing in need of the guiding hand
of imperial rule) offers one example; some contemporary views expressed in the united
states concerning the nation’s world-historical role in the promotion of freedom proffer
another.
6 this point relates to the discussion of the aristocratic polis Nietzsche offers in Beyond
Good and Evil, 262. so long as the conditions of life in the community are harsh, Nietzsche
notes, its morality is correspondingly so. As conditions cease to be so threatening, so the
power of morality diminishes. in other words, the feeling of a community’s power is ex-
pressed in terms of its tendency to resist what is different from it, its “universalizing” incli-
nation to see the world exclusively in terms of itself.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 198 2013-09-20 11:36:16

of defence mechanism, a symptom characteristic of impoverished modes

of existence that feel endangered by the world: the greater the abso-
lutism, the greater the impoverishment. the most grievous injustice,
Nietzsche asserts, occurs where a form of life that is of the “smallest, most
contracted and most meagre” kind takes itself to be “the goal and mea-
sure of things” (Human, All Too Human, Preface, 6) and as a consequence
turns an evil eye on everything alien to it. injustice is thus characterized
as the constant threat of violence towards difference. Yet, this unjust ten-
dency is at the same time a product of this very difference, of the multi-
plicity of potential forms that characterizes the living world. As the
preface Nietzsche adds to Daybreak in 1886 reminds us, with this thought
we are returned to the domain of the “last man” and the priestly values
of the “good and the just” – notions castigated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(see Daybreak, Preface, 3). One can see Nietzsche in this way identifying
what will become the target of the most unrestrained polemic of his late
writings, beginning with the first and third essays of the Genealogy and
continuing through Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist. this target is
the christian church and the priestly asceticism associated with it.
Nietzsche characterizes the church as an institution that seeks to
seize hold of and exercise the right to dictate a universal justice for all,
purportedly in the name of an ideal, pain-free existence dedicated to
the pursuit of comfort and contentment (the “last man” ideal of a heav-
enly after-life). With it comes the threat of a universalizing tyranny in
which the least experimental forms of life (those that are most “mea-
gre” and hence threatened, which for Nietzsche means those inclined
to be most conventional) are empowered to dictate the norm. From
the last man’s standpoint, it should be recalled, pain itself is regarded
as injustice, as is plurality and the anti-consensual tension and conflict
plurality necessarily induces. From this threatened perspective, tension
and conflict take on the guise of something appalling that needs to be
eliminated. however, as we have just noted, such apparent “injustice” is
in Nietzsche’s view an essential condition of life, one that must be simul-
taneously negotiated, guarded against, and yet also celebrated. indeed,
the meaning of this condition must be completely and relentlessly
grasped and integrated into our understanding of our own humanity
and hence our place in the world.7 Nietzsche’s late writings are above all
characterized by their attempt to press this insight into formulas. the
late texts consistently seek to facilitate a naturalistic appreciation of
the multiplicity and experimentalism that characterizes the condition of
7 see The Gay Science, 110, discussed in some detail above (chapter 2, section 6).
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life in general despite the narrow and restrictive limitations that neces-
sarily characterize life in particular.8 in doing so, Nietzsche seeks to
pass beyond morality (that is, beyond the rule of convention, of the
norm) to the vision of a humanity that joyfully questions its own limita-
tions, a humanity that lives dangerously in the acknowledgement of its
own finitude.9 From the standpoint of convention this is a humanity
that looks dangerously “immoral.” in Nietzsche’s conception, however,
such a stance is supremely ethical in its naturalistic affirmation of the
risky and uncertain plurality of possibilities that human life must face
and embrace. Revaluation, in other words, involves the recasting of our
ethical propensities rather than their abandonment.10 As he puts it in
the Genealogy (i, 17), “[W]hat i want … is written on the spine of my last
book, Beyond Good and Evil … at least this does not mean ‘Beyond Good
and Bad.’”11
the risky nature of plurality serves as a reminder of why liberty is nec-
essary but costly. in order to grasp fully the nature of values and become
ethical rather than merely “moral” one must be free; that is, one must
risk standing beyond the domain of normative compulsion that consti-
tutes the realm of average, everyday life, the world of mere thoughtless
8 Bearing this notion of multiplicity in mind, Richard Rorty’s characterization of

Nietzsche as a thinker driven, like Kant, by “a desire for purity” rings true in an at best
rather limited sense (see “human Rights,” Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3,
182). it may be the case that Nietzsche to some degree valorizes “self-conscious self-
sufficiency” – although, as i have argued, self-consciousness is the mere witness of such
sufficiency rather than its living reality – but self-sufficiency is for Nietzsche something vali-
dated by its being in service to the distinctly “impure” and contradictory multiplicity that is
made manifest in the many different forms of life that are possible.
9 see The Gay Science, 283.
10 Robert c. solomon argues that “Nietzsche is not an ‘immoralist’ – as he occasionally
likes to bill himself. he is instead the defender of a richer kind of morality, a broader, more
varied perspective (or, rather, an indefinitely large number of perspectives) in which the
gifts and talents of each individual count foremost” (“Nietzsche ad hominem,” 203). While
this view is clearly one i share, i would perhaps be more wary of attributing to Nietzsche the
positive attitude that is implied here. Nietzsche’s interest in the great individual presup-
poses no egalitarian condition on the basis of which a person’s talents and gifts are to be
valued. there is likewise no desert or otherwise involved in the realization of such talents,
either. As we have seen zarathustra say, the chances are one will suffer for one’s gifts and
sacrifice oneself to them to the extent of embracing misery. Nietzsche may have aban-
doned his early adherence to schopenhauer, but he remains a “Dionysian pessimist” (see
chapter 5, section 8).
11 As thiele points out, “Nietzsche’s object in asserting the unaccountability of man is
not to deny all values, but to create new ones” (Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul,
84). For thiele, what Nietzsche demands in place of other-worldly “moral accountability”
is “earthly responsibility.”
25660_Sedgwick.indb 200 2013-09-20 11:36:16

doing according to the dictates of habits and conventions. Freedom, in

this regard, is necessarily creative, since by throwing up new possibilities
of doing it exceeds the thoughtless repetition of value judgements that
characterizes the norm. this is also why freedom, for Nietzsche, means
living dangerously. in creation, one affirms the threatening manner in
which “power and right [Recht] and extensiveness of perspective rise into
the heights together” (Human All Too Human, Preface, 6). Power, a sense
of right, and the plurality that comes from affirming one’s ability to see
the world from more than one perspective entwine in an all-embracing
breadth of creative insight capable of endowing life with meaning. At the
same time, the awareness of perspective obliges one to refuse the temp-
tation to believe that this meaning encapsulates the totality of possible
experiments in living and the multiplicity of senses they can engender.
to be ethical, therefore, means to affirm plurality. such an affirmation,
however, does not for Nietzsche involve the uncritical embracing of any-
thing and everything – it cleaves to its “good and bad” even as it refuses
the absolutism of good and evil. Being free involves confronting the
“chaos and labyrinth of existence” contained in oneself as well as the
world (The Gay Science, 322), but one only does so in so far as one has
cultivated the ability to discriminate and have power over one’s values –
what Nietzsche in The Gay Science calls “‘giving style’ to one’s character”
(290). the pursuit of such power, which lies at the heart of Nietzsche’s
creative ethic, demands revaluation.
2. In the Genealogy Nietzsche poses the question of revaluation in increasingly

physiological terms. Estimating the value of values entails asking what they are
good for – what aspects of life do different systems of values promote, and what
aspects do they hinder? To answer such a question means to engage in revaluation.
Revaluation, in turn, requires the freedom given by having relative independence
from one’s own values. The philosopher’s task, Nietzsche argues, is to decide on
values from the standpoint of this freedom. This entails overcoming the Christian
church and its pious absolutism. The notion of revaluation does not denote some-
thing entirely new: slave morality, Nietzsche notes, is an example of a revaluation
of values. His own, however, claims to be unique in its relentless drive to overturn
Christian moral precepts. In twilight of the idols the physiological approach
outlined in the Genealogy is further developed as “symptomatology.” Nietzsche’s
attacks on Socratic rationalism illustrate well his approach. Socrates exemplifies
the kind of “weakness” outlined in the 1886 preface to human, All too human.
Values, for Nietzsche, now become signs to be interpreted: they tell us more about the
esteemer than what is esteemed. Cultivating an attitude of justice toward life means
one must resist the temptation to judge and condemn it, as Socrates did. This con-
demnatory attitude reveals Socratic thought to be a violation of reality, as does its
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tendency to equate diverse and heterogeneous elements with one another (the
Socratic dialectical equation of reason, justice, and virtue). In its violence to mul-
tiplicity and heterogeneity Socratism is a close relative of Christianity. Both seek to
master life by way of equating reality with the rule of the concept. Both are absolut-
ist in spirit. Nietzsche’s psychology, in contrast, embraces a naturalistic immoral-
ism that seeks to do justice to that thing most spurned by Socratic and Christian
metaphysics: the body. Revaluation, in the light of this, is conceived as resting on
the contention that a person’s values are the expression of a greater organizing
power, the spontaneity of which receives its expression and confirmation in the
“happiness” of a being who has learnt to be at ease with his or her own embodi-
ment. Where Christianity attacks the body, revaluation demands the body be re-
spected as the source of values. Revaluation thus cultivates respect for the passions.
This forms the basis of Nietzsche’s ethic of mercy. In the Antichrist, however, this
ethic is sundered by the demands of polemic.
the Genealogy offers a forceful enough introduction to the notion of re-

valuation. the text’s first essay concludes with a “Note” calling for the
writing of “a series of academic prize-essays” as a means of promoting
“the study of the history of morality” (17). For the practising academic read-
er, reading this passage can stimulate memories of being an undergradu-
ate student, for we are set an essay question to ponder: “What signposts
does linguistics, especially the study of etymology, give to the evolution of moral
concepts?” it is not only linguistic scholars who should be set to work look-
ing for clues concerning the historical development of morality in this
historical way; “physiologists and doctors” should likewise be invited to
contribute. this is because “every table of values, every ‘thou shalt’
known to history, needs first and foremost a physiological elucidation
and interpretation, rather than a psychological one; and all of them
await critical study from medical science ” (ibid.). One should note here
a subtle but significant shift in emphasis in Nietzsche’s naturalism as it
enters its last phase. Morals need to be interpreted in an increasingly
historical-physiological manner rather than a historical-psychological
one. thus, the Genealogy develops a more overt articulation of the notion
of the body as a physiological construction constituted by domains of
cultural practices.12 this shift in emphasis allows Nietzsche to pose in a
more pointed way the central question associated with the notion of re-
valuation: we must ask “what is this or that table of values and ‘morals’
worth?” (ibid.) this is a question that, in accordance with the view
12 these are exemplified by the practices associated with punishment (see Genealogy, ii,
and chapter 4).
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expressed in the 1886 preface to Human, All Too Human, needs to be

posed from a variety of perspectives, with especial stress on the issue
“‘value for what?’” in other words, some values (and one must remember
here that for Nietzsche this means something essentially practical: values
are ways of living not abstract ideas) may promote one thing while hin-
dering something else. For example, he notes, what may be of greatest
value “with regard to the longest possible life-span of a race … would
not have anything like the same value if it was a question of developing
a stronger type” of person. this point is clarified: what is good for many
people (the majority) and what is good for some others (the minority)
is not one and the same thing. the important thing to notice here is
that values are always values for something in particular, and can never
be estimated from a universal and timeless perspective. Values are, in
other words, instrumental: they simultaneously serve and cultivate one
particular psycho-physiology or another. the task of revaluation must
be undertaken with this in mind. it is for this reason that revaluation
requires the liberated perspective of someone who is free, that is a per-
son no longer mastered by their esteeming beliefs but endowed with the
power of lordship over them. Philosophy is thereby given its future cre-
ative task. each of the scholarly disciplines, Nietzsche holds, “must, from
now on, prepare the way for the future work of the philosopher: this
work being understood to mean that the philosopher has to solve the
problem of values and that he has to decide on the hierarchy of values”
(ibid.). to legislate concerning this hierarchy requires daring first to
overturn, “reassess and reverse ‘eternal values’” (Beyond Good and Evil,
203). to teach a revaluation of values, in other words, is to teach the
overcoming of the christian church and its avowedly pious universalism
by way of “a critique of moral values” (Genealogy, Preface, 6). conventional
esteeming habits, not least those of the “good and the just,” must be
placed in question.
in one sense, the concept of revaluation does not denote something
unique to Nietzsche’s thought. Revaluation is not historically original – it
has its precedents and predecessors. the slave morality that Nietzsche
outlines most fully in the first essay of the Genealogy represents one kind
of revaluation, namely that of noble values, and also a kind of gruesome
culmination of the power struggles of the ancient world, which led to
the condition of lamentation called modernity.13 christianity, Nietzsche
13 the christian revaluation, Walter Kaufmann notes, is held by Nietzsche to be the

most radical overturning of ancient values possible: “he claims that the christians turned
the embodiment of classical morality into the prototype of evil” (Kaufmann, “how
Nietzsche Revolutionized ethics,” in From Shakespeare to Existentialism, 214).
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holds, inherits this revaluation, for its values are expressions of priest
and slave ressentiment dressed up in theological garb (Genealogy, i, 8).14
christian values stand as the reversal “of all Aryan values, the victory of
chandala values, the evangel preached to the poor and lowly, the collec-
tive rebellion of everything downtrodden, wretched, ill-constituted”
(Twilight of the Idols, “the ‘improvers’ of Mankind,” 4). it is against such
a revaluation that Nietzsche’s own is aimed. in his last book, he toys with
the idea that revaluation as he characterizes it – that is, as rebellion
against christian revaluation – occurs exclusively within the sphere of his
own thought (see Ecce Homo, “Why i Am so Wise,” 1). in the Genealogy,
this rebellion is presented as a tantalizing possibility, one that will be
initiated in the grand style by Nietzsche himself in a work he is currently
preparing: “the Will to Power. Attempt at a Revaluation of all Values”
(Genealogy, ii, 27). By 1888 Nietzsche holds the revaluation to have been
brought to some kind of fruition not in The Will to Power (a book never
written) but in The Antichrist (see Antichrist, 62).
Twilight of the Idols, the work Nietzsche writes immediately before turn-
ing to The Antichrist, talks of the notion of revaluation as posing so tremen-
dous and ominous a question mark that “it casts a shadow over him who
sets it up” (Twilight, Forward). Revaluation, in other words, haunts him,
for it poses the most distressing of questions concerning not only what is
re-valued but he or she who re-values. in Twilight, following the suggested
approach of the Genealogy, physiology is brought to the fore. What matters
above all is the body and the various sign-languages of esteeming associ-
ated with it. it is in this context that Nietzsche’s most virulent attack on
socratic rationalism is fashioned. socrates, the traditional paradigm of
the philosopher, is a “problem”: his universalism reveals him to be the
exemplar of the meagre kind of life alluded to in the 1886 preface to
Human, All Too Human. such meagreness Nietzsche now baptizes as “déca-
dence.” the formalism of socratic rationalism displays the decadent ten-
dency to evaluate existence generally rather than deal with life in its
particularity (Twilight, “the Problem of socrates,” 2). the problem with
socrates is that he concludes that life is good for nothing.15 Nietzsche’s
14 the creators of christianity re-valued and thereby overcame the dominant values of
their times (see Beyond Good and evil, 46; On the Genealogy of Morality, i, 7).
15 Nietzsche has in mind socrates’s dying comment in Plato’s Phaedo 118, that he owes
the god Asclepius the sacrifice of a rooster – the traditional way of expressing thanks for
overcoming an illness. this comment, Nietzsche says, is “absurd and dreadful” for those
sensitive to its genuine meaning (The Gay Science, 340). it means life is an illness and death
is its cure. the wise persons of all ages, Nietzsche concludes, have accepted this ugly pre-
supposition (see Twilight, “the Problem of socrates,” 1).
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deployment of a physiological reading of socratic reason serves as a

means of resisting such a dour conclusion and initiates a key strategy of
revaluation. Our values do not say anything objective about what is valued.
they are signs that betray the nature of the one who values, unwitting
testimony as to whom one really is: “Judgements, value-judgements about
life, for or against, can in the end never be true: they have value only as
symptoms, they can be considered only as symptoms, – in themselves
such judgements are stupidities” (ibid.). Because we have the tendency to
evaluate the world in our own image the toughest thing to grasp is the
inherent plurality of existence and the ensuing and very subtle fact that,
as a consequence of this plurality, “the value of life cannot be estimated”
(ibid.). so long as we live we are part of life, and as such can never pose
as impartial “judges”16 concerning its value or otherwise. Doing justice to
life, Nietzsche argues following the argument concerning freedom pre-
sented in the 1886 preface to Human, All Too Human, means grasping the
great finesse of this thought and spurning the “most bizarre” of socratic
temptations which seeks to set reason, virtue, and happiness in a dialec-
tical relation of equality with one another (Twilight, “the Problem of
socrates,” 4). this kind of equalization epitomizes the conceptual naivety
that is at work in philosophy generally.17 Philosophy’s temptation to find
things rigidly akin to one another is a naïve violence against reality since
things are simply not equal (they are heterogeneous: reason is not the
same as virtue, virtue is not the same as life, etc.) (ibid.). socratism is re-
vealing only in its unwitting betrayal of its true nature as decadent thought,
exemplified by a priest-like hatred of the senses and the body. in this,
socratism is a close relative of christian morality – and the latter is a revolt
against life (Twilight, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 5).
Physiology as Nietzsche conceives it in Twilight seeks to do justice to
the body and its history and constitutes a re-endorsement of the embod-
ied conception of life and the self advocated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
this naturalistic “immoralism” rebels against “reason” as traditionally
conceived, and in so doing takes an initial step toward revaluation: “first
example of my ‘revaluation of all values’: a well-constituted human be-
ing, a ‘happy’ one, must perform certain actions and instinctively shrinks
from other actions, he transports the order of which he is the physiologi-
cal representative into his relationships with other human beings and
with things. in a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness”
16 “Richter”
17 see Twilight, “‘Reason’ in Philosophy,” 1, in which Nietzsche castigates all philoso-
phers for being conceptual fetishists who unthinkingly subject lived existence to the tyr-
anny of a formalistically conceived and narrowing dogmatism.
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(Twilight, “the Four Great errors,” 2). in this passage we see yet another
endorsement of the freedom-cultivating pluralistic attitude sketched out
in the 1886 preface to Human, All Too Human. A person’s virtues ought
not to command them, but should rather be an expression of a greater
organizing force. such “happiness” as one may have is the source of
one’s virtues.18 We must not, in consequence, expect happiness to ema-
nate from the world around us. We must make it – it must be our achieve-
ment, our creation, as our virtues must likewise be. the problem with
the christian church, as The Antichrist sets out to show, is that it compre-
hends properly neither happiness nor virtue, since it refuses to acknowl-
edge the body as anything other than an impediment to the immortal
soul’s salvation. here we arrive at the essence of what Nietzsche means in
Twilight when he calls theological morality anti-natural. church morality
is a form of “anti-nature” since it attacks the body, the realm of the pas-
sions and drives that makes us who we are, in all its aspects. in turn, “to
attack the passions at their roots means to attack life at its roots: the
practice of the church is [therefore] hostile to life” (Twilight, “Morality as
Anti-Nature,” 1). We have seen that out of his naturalistic analysis of
power relations Nietzsche develops an ethic of mercy resistant to what he
considers to be the revenging and punishing morality of the church and
the “good and the just.” such an ethics spurns morality as traditionally
conceived (i.e. as a universalism that endorses commonly accepted no-
tions of individual responsibility and guilt) in favour of a pluralistic view
that endorses the essential innocence of humankind. The Antichrist rep-
resents the development of this ethics as polemic; it is an ethic of mercy
given teeth.
3. the Antichrist is a text that stakes a claim to stand outside the institutions
that characterize the history of the West. It is an attempt to bring to fruition
Nietzsche’s naturalism and moral critique and, as such, stands as his most com-
plete articulation of a revaluation of values. In pursuing the path of revaluation
the Antichrist is compelled into claiming an authority that marks a departure
from the approach Nietzsche adopts earlier in Beyond Good and evil and the
Genealogy. This departure compromises the ethic of mercy he has hitherto so
painstakingly formulated. the Antichrist invokes a “Hyperborean” standpoint
beyond the realm of the everyday that is both oracular and naturalistic. The
Hyperborean being hails from a land of myth, a world untainted by Christian ec-
clesiastical influence. Hyperborean happiness, as Nietzsche articulates it, is akin
18 What is Nietzsche’s happiness? it is, he says in The Gay Science, “Joke, cunning and
Revenge,” 2, the embarking on adventure, “sailing with every wind.”
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to the legislative act he attributes to the creation of values. The Hyperborean condi-
tion thus invokes the freedom of the creative will celebrated by Zarathustra. At the
same time, it also invokes the naturalistic problem of values as Nietzsche conceives
it: the problem of what kind of humanity shall be “willed” and “bred” that is ca-
pable of answering to the demands of “life.” The conception of humanity envis-
aged here is akin to that of the overman presented in thus spoke zarathustra
and is a counter to the “corrupt” being that the church has advocated and culti-
vated as the paradigmatic example of the good person. Nietzsche levels the charge
of corruption in terms, he says, free of moral taint. Corruption, as he envisages it,
means the predilection to choose what is harmful to one. It is this predilection that
contravenes the demands of “life.” In making this last claim, the Antichrist
slips into a mode of judgement that invokes the authority of the courtroom. The
Christian advocacy of pity runs counter to the “law” of life. The text thereby claims
the status to be witness, judge, and physician of culture at one and the same time.
In this claim to judge in a manner that invokes the authority of “life,” the
Antichrist steps beyond the ethic of mercy that Nietzsche has formulated. The text
invokes a perspective that is priestly in spirit – the words of a worshipper whose
worship empowers him with the authority necessary for judgement. In this way, the
oracular combines with the naturalistic in a manner that is problematic.
in its unrestrained attack on the christian church and its traditions, The
Antichrist stakes a claim to being an anti-institutional utterance par excel-
lence, a critical voice that emanates from somewhere beyond the realm of
church and sanctified authority. the text also represents something
more than a blasphemous work of counter-theology. it represents a final
attempt to bring to fruition Nietzsche’s critical and naturalistic immoral-
ism. As such The Antichrist stands as Nietzsche’s single most sustained
attempt at a revaluation of values. that Nietzsche considers this to be
the case is shown by the comment he makes in the forward to Twilight
of the Idols. the forward, dated 30 september 1888, is written on
the day on which the first attempt at “the Revaluation of all Values [i.e.
The Antichrist]” was brought to fruition.19 As a work of revaluation, The
Antichrist can be interpreted as attempting a post-moral assessment of
the order of rank among values in line with the project outlined at the
end of the first essay of the Genealogy. it is thereby compelled to make
authoritative claims concerning not only the meaning of moral dis-
course but also the relative worth of different systems of value, as it must
do in order to offer an assessment of the value of values. however, The
Antichrist does this in a manner that takes it beyond the rhetoric of
19 The Antichrist was begun on 3 september 1888 and finished on 30 september.
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unmasking that characterizes much of Beyond Good and Evil and the
Genealogy, and this in turn propels Nietzsche beyond the ethic of mercy
that is embraced in his writings up to and including Twilight of the Idols.
As Twilight informs us, in whatever manner one might speak of values
one necessarily speaks from somewhere.20 Nietzsche’s chosen ground, the
place from where a first stab at revaluation will be attempted, is, he notes
at the outset of The Antichrist, “hyperborean.” the hyperborean stand-
point is oracular and naturalistic in equal measure. hyperboreans dwell
in a mythical land of plenty that lies beyond the north winds, somewhere
that has escaped the millennia-long “labyrinth” of christian metaphysics
(Antichrist, 1). hyperboreans live beyond the norms of modern life. As
such, they are characterized by an ability to embrace a perspective
untrammelled by traditional constraints. As is so often the case with
Nietzsche, intimations of distance endow the hyperborean with the pe-
culiar and uncanny authority associated with the defying of convention.
“happiness,” the text implies early on, is the sign and seal of this oracu-
lar authority. there is a kind of “happiness” that is genuine, one opposed
to the lazy ideal of resigned contentment characteristic of the “last man.”
happiness is encapsulated by a dictum: it merely requires “a Yes, a No, a
straight line, a goal” (ibid.).21 With this we are offered a “formula” that
operates like an aphoristic encapsulation of Nietzsche’s conception of
the creativity of the law-giving act. Law-giving, like happiness, involves a
“Yes,” i.e. an affirmation of something as good. in so far as such affirma-
tion “heightens the feeling of power” (Antichrist, 2) it also compels us to
condemn what runs counter to this feeling as bad, to say “No” to it. With
these judgements comes directness, a “straight line” that corresponds to
the uprightness of a moulded and stamped character. From this direct-
ness flows a sense of purpose, a “goal.” understood in this way, happiness
is a sign that the “feeling of power grows,” and this in turn is testimony
that something resistant has been surmounted and incorporated. the
happiness celebrated in The Antichrist is an analogue of the happiness
that springs from the creative act of law-giving celebrated in part three of
20 see Twilight of the Idols, “Morality as Anti-Nature,” 5: “A condemnation of life on the

part of the living remains in the end merely a symptom of a particular kind of life … When
we speak of values, we speak with the inspiration, with the way of looking at things, which
is part of life: life itself forces us to posit values; life itself values through us when we posit
values.” thus, all morality is a sign of forms of life – the question that pertains to every
morality is what form of life does it indicate? this point must likewise be posed concerning any
attempt at a revaluation, in so far as the latter cannot aspire to a standpoint beyond value,
merely one “beyond good and evil.”
21 As if to emphasize the continuity, this echoes Twilight, “Maxims and Arrows,” 44.
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Zarathustra and again at the end of Twilight of the Idols. such happiness
testifies to attained creative power and is a manifestation of the satisfying
sensation of stamping one’s creative will “on millennia as on wax” (Twilight,
“the hammer speaks”). happiness of this kind, in short, is a sign of the
freedom associated with the coining of values. As such, it excites the
most overwhelming sensation of an increase in power there is: through
values humans are fashioned and what greater kind of alliance between
creativity and power could there be than this? We are thus offered by way
of this text a testimony and confirmation of the conjoining of “power
and right” as the epitome of a sense of rightness.22
through the text of The Antichrist speaks the voice of one who is free
because he is empowered with the freedom to judge otherwise than
christian metaphysics would allow. On the basis of this hyperborean au-
thority, Nietzsche raises what is for him the key question. this question
takes us to the heart of the naturalistic conception of the creative indi-
vidual as it presents itself in his late thought: “the problem i thus pose is
… what type of man shall be bred, shall be willed, for being higher in
value, worthier of life, more certain of a future” (Antichrist, 3).23 the
“problem” we are presented with here concerns the cultivation of a type
of humanity that can be deemed worthier of life as a consequence of its
being endowed with a sense of futurity. this amounts to a question of
justification presented on a grand scale. in effect, The Antichrist is seeking
to elucidate the value-conditions in virtue of which a form of human
existence could be attained capable of justifying all that has preceded
it.24 such a form of justification is naturalistic in that the fashioning of a
“higher” humanity more assured of its own future is deemed sufficient to
justify humanity, rather than the will of a God. such justification is envis-
aged, moreover, as being achieved by living up to a standard of measure
dictated by life itself rather than by the divine. Revaluation, as it is per-
formed in The Antichrist, therefore, invokes a naturalistic authority with
regard to assessing and affirming those values that are equal to and can
therefore answer the demands of life.
22 this again echoes the ideas celebrated in the 1886 preface to Human, All Too Human
discussed above in section 1.
23 in this passage, The Antichrist picks up on the ideas outlined in section 6 of the pref-
ace to the Genealogy.
24 One should perhaps note here the connection between this discussion and the no-
tion of the “sovereign individual” presented in the second essay of the Genealogy (2–3). this
kind of individual, exemplified by a degree of autonomy that contrasts starkly with those
incapable of keeping their word, is presented rhetorically as a justification of the misery
resulting from the normative compulsion and torture that precedes them.
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Nietzsche is in no doubt that some examples of the future-oriented

humanity he imagines, each of which might also be called “a sort of
overman”(Antichrist, 4), have existed on earth. the problem is that each
has only ever done so “as a fortunate accident, as an exception, never as
something willed” (Antichrist, 3). up to now, what has been “willed, bred,
and attained” by the christian church is the counter-image of this kind of
human being. the achievement of the church has been nothing less
than the fashioning of a “corrupt” humanity. Nietzsche is unambiguous
when it comes to the charge he seeks to level here. he does not wish to
prosecute the church under an indictment of moral depravity. the pros-
ecution in question is to be brought in a sense that is “let me emphasize
this once more - moraline-free,” i.e. free of any tincture of moral indict-
ment (Antichrist, 6). What Nietzsche deems as “corrupt” concerns a loss
of the “instincts” and a consequent predilection to choose what is bad for
oneself, what is “disadvantageous.” in a manner that recalls Twilight’s
discussion of “anti-nature,” christian morality is accused of being a de-
parture from what is natural, of being a perversion of the natural inclina-
tions of “life.” Nietzsche’s rhetoric thereby takes on a judgmental aspect
in The Antichrist in a manner that is not found in the texts that precede
it, including Twilight of the Idols. “Life” has become a word of authority,
for what Nietzsche now invokes in order to condemn the christian
church is nothing less than “life itself”: “Life itself is to my mind the in-
stinct for growth, for durability, for an accumulation of forces, for power:
where the will to power is lacking there is decadence.” the hitherto pur-
portedly “highest,” christian values lack this will. it is this absence of a
will empowered by life that makes them decadent and “nihilistic” (ibid.).25
Nietzsche thereby mounts an attack on christianity that replicates the
sphere of the courtroom. What does not fulfil the demands laid down by
“life itself” is fit only to be indicted, on a charge of decadence, to stand
trial in the court of life. the teachings of the church are those of the
religion of pity. Pity and life, Nietzsche asserts, do not mix, not least be-
cause “Pity makes suffering contagious” and in so doing it “crosses the
law of development, which is the law of selection. it preserves what is ripe
for destruction … From the standpoint of the instinct of life, a remedy
certainly seems necessary” (Antichrist, 7). in attacking christian pity,
Nietzsche is thus attacking what he conceives to be inimical to life, what
is “anti-natural.” in making this criticism, however, The Antichrist stakes a
claim to a standpoint coterminous with that of “life itself.” the authority
Nietzsche invokes in order to criticize christianity springs from his
25 For some thought-provoking discussion of this matter see Bull, Anti-Nietzsche, 44ff.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 210 2013-09-20 11:36:16

homage to the drives and the body, to the domain of what is “natural.”
thus empowered, he lays claim to the status of a cultural diagnostician
and in this way sets himself up as the oracular mouthpiece through
which life itself pronounces judgement. Life now “speaks” in the guise of
a self-styled physician of culture who in speaking becomes endowed with
authority and identity in equal measure: “to be physicians here, to be in-
exorable here, to wield the scalpel here – that is our part, that is our love of
man, that is how we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans” (ibid.). it is here
that the revaluation as Nietzsche conceives it in The Antichrist oversteps
the bounds of the ethic of mercy he has hitherto endorsed. to speak like
a physician means to speak as one who claims to know not merely who is
sick but how to cure them. it means to claim authority to judge univer-
sally in virtue of possessing knowledge gleaned from the standpoint of
life concerning what is sick and what is not. in the very act of revaluation
the text recoils into metaphysics as Nietzsche here invokes a kind of le-
gitimacy reminiscent of the priest – the authority of one who has borne
witness to the demands of “life.” however post-metaphysical the reasons
for engaging in such talk might be, the one who ultimately worships
“life itself,” even in opposition to the christian God, remains a kind of
priest to the extent that he or she seeks to judge and thereby condemn
in the name of what is universally “true.” “true,” Nietzsche makes per-
fectly clear, here denotes that which is beneficial to “life”: to speak truly
is to make a judgement – to speak in a manner that is affirmative of life
(Antichrist, 9). some values are affirmative, some are not – some values
are “true” and some not. in thus endorsing this conception of the “true”
Nietzsche assumes the mantle of empowered Dionysian worshipper and
oracle. the reader who allows The Antichrist authority on this basis would
have to accept the role of a passive initiate into the text’s wisdom con-
cerning what it means to worship life.
4. The problematic nature of the combination of oracular and naturalistic ele-

ments in the Antichrist is revealed when the text curses Christianity. The unre-
served nature of issuing a curse undermines Nietzsche’s previous desire to avoid
the language of condemnation. Nietzsche’s naturalism, as hitherto articulated,
does not license such vehemence. Indeed, the condemnatory tone in the Antichrist
also runs counter to his own insight elsewhere (e.g. Genealogy, I, 7; II, 11, 13)
into the positive value of what is here so unreservedly attacked. On the basis of the
latter insight, Christianity does not need to be damned but merely overcome in a
spirit of generosity and even gratitude. In this regard, Nietzsche’s writings prior to
the Antichrist paradoxically take one step beyond this text in their invocation
not of “life” but of “law” as a means of overcoming morality by extending its do-
main toward critical self-reflection and embracing the insight that what lives has
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an essential innocence at its core. To grasp this innocence as it is celebrated in

twilight of the idols or Assorted Opinions and Maxims is to embark on the
path of seeking to overcome accepted ideas of the relation between judge and judged
– to accept humanity in its plurality, dangerous though that plurality might at
times seem. It is to think of the miscreant in a manner that refuses to attribute the
kind of illusory guilt that condemns and curses unreservedly. This is a way of
thinking to be found in Nietzsche’s conception of the creator as law-giver. Such
legislating gives values in a manner that does not seek to force, but rather under-
mines the rule of the norm through creativity. It is here that the political invitation
posed by Nietzsche’s texts makes itself manifest. This conception of legislation
marks a return to the Nietzsche of the Birth of tragedy and thereby provokes
reflection on the enchantment of myth. Nietzsche’s thought pays testimony to the
way in which naturalism is a liberation from the nihilistic realm of metaphysics
that at the same time brings with it its own threat of nihilism. Nietzsche’s answer
to this threat is to institute a naturalized oracular vision in the form of the creative
law-giver and overman. This answer pays testimony to the necessity and danger of
myth as it is articulated in the context of a modernity haunted by what Horkheimer
and Adorno call the “dialectic of enlightenment.” Nietzsche’s thought is at the
same time an incursion into this dialectic and its re-articulation in self-critical,
problematic form.
On the basis of this presupposition of authority The Antichrist concludes

with a final judgement of its own, with a revaluation of christian values:
i pronounce my judgment. i condemn christianity. i bring against

the christian church the most dreadful of all indictments26 that a
prosecutor27 has ever uttered. it is for me the highest of all con-
ceivable corruptions … it has made every value into an un-value,
every truth into a lie, every integrity into a vileness of soul … drain-
ing all blood, all love, all hope for life … this eternal indictment
of christianity i will write on all walls, wherever there are walls … i
call christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost cor-
ruption, the one great instinct of revenge … i call it the one im-
mortal blemish of mankind. And one calculates the time from the
dies nefastus [unlucky day] with which this calamity began – from
the first day of christianity! Why not rather from its last? From today?
Revaluation of all values! (The Antichrist, 62)
26 Anklagen.
27 Ankläger.
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The Antichrist thereby ends in a tone of condemnation. it is a tone re-

flected by the subtitle Nietzsche finally added to the work: “curse on
christianity.” this subtitle, like the concluding condemnation, replicates
the very thing Nietzsche accuses christianity of being culpable for. it is a
curse. in revaluing Nietzsche judges and in judging he is driven into a
way of speaking that he otherwise elsewhere consistently spurns, howev-
er ironic and judgemental he can often be. to appreciate the full extent
to which this is the case, one must consider what a curse is and what it
means to issue one. the person who really curses does not do so lightly,
casually, or in a manner that pertains to limits. A curse is unreserved. it
pertains to a kind of absoluteness that claims universality. i might, in
contrast, express my low opinion of someone, but such an opinion is
limited in so far as it is mine. the possible universality of a judgement
that another is somehow of lesser worth is like Kant’s conception of
beauty:28 it elicits agreement from others; its logic (however dubious and
violent) is consensual. Judgements of opinion can always be modified by
degrees. A curse, however, stands as it is or falls and ceases to be what it
is. A curse thereby aspires to immortality in two senses. First, there is the
status of immortal awfulness bestowed on the thing cursed. second,
there is the immortality (that is, the “truth”) of the curse itself that iden-
tifies this terribleness and, in doing so, paradoxically preserves what has
been identified as terrible even as it rejects it. A curse therefore cannot
even die a little when the thing cursed dies, for its judgement is without
reserve. curses colonize. As Nietzsche issues his curse the judgement
engulfs the sense of mercy he has so lovingly cultivated: the refusal to
accuse, find guilty, and condemn is itself refused. the hallmarks of
Nietzsche’s immoralism, however much he may protest to the contrary
at the beginning of the book, are compromised. A curse is never free of
moral venom.
At most, the kind of naturalism Nietzsche elucidates up until The
Antichrist legitimizes him to consider christianity as something unfortu-
nate due to the extent to which it is driven to judge and hold account-
able in a manner that denigrates the body and stifles the creative
experimentalism of value creation. But, as the first and third essays of the
Genealogy tell us, one must also be grateful even for the priestly type, for
it has been instrumental in cultivating intellectuality and has helped pre-
serve our kind from despair and destruction (Genealogy, i, 7; iii, 11).
indeed, the ascetic priest is, in this last regard, considered in the Genealogy
28 i am thinking, of course, of the famous discussion in Kant’s Critique of Judgement.
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to be life affirming: “this apparent enemy of life, this negative man, – he

actually belongs to the really great forces in life which conserve and create
the positive” (Genealogy, iii, 13). As a consequence of the painful socializa-
tion of the drives humanity suffers from itself, and the ascetic priest of-
fers a way of making this suffering bearable by offering an explanation
for suffering. there is, on this basis, no need to curse christianity. One
needs merely to spurn it, and to do so generously and appreciatively
rather than unconditionally – such a position allows one the luxury of
retaining those elements that might be considered worthy in what one
denies. in this regard, the spirit of Nietzsche’s writings prior to The
Antichrist actually takes one beyond the revaluation proposed by it.
With this, we are returned to the retraction of belief in the integrity of
morality that characterizes the majority of Nietzsche’s mature writings
beginning with Daybreak. in this book, Nietzsche says in the 1886 pref-
ace, “faith in morality is withdrawn – but why? Out of morality!” (Daybreak¸
Preface, 4) here, it is not “life” but “law” that demands the cultivation of
a sceptical attitude concerning our moral beliefs. Nietzsche and the fel-
low thinkers he imagines and hopes for may be immoralists, “But there
is no doubt, there still speaks a ‘thou shalt’ to us too, we too still obey a
strict law that has been set over us – and this is the last ethic, that which
to us too still makes itself audible, that [ethic according] to which we
too know how to live; here, if in anything at all, we are still men of con-
science: namely, that we do not return again to what we regard as out-
lived and rotten, to something ‘unworthy of belief,’ be it called God,
virtue, truth, justice, brotherly love” (ibid.). such an attitude does not
demand a break with morality in the name of “life,” as The Antichrist does
in its search for a culmination in revaluation, but envisages instead an
ethics that is at once a continuation of morality and its overcoming, one
that represents an extension of “the German integrity and piety of mil-
lennia” in its openness and refusal to judge precipitately. Being just, on
this conception, is a matter of specificity, of sensitivity to the particularity
of every human situation. the possibility of genuine justice thus begins
with the affirmation of an essential innocence as being characteristic of
all of us. “Our teaching,” Nietzsche says in Twilight of the Idols, is that no
one can be held accountable for being who they are (Twilight, “the Four
Great errors,” 8). We are not the products of a design or will, be it that
of our own making or another’s. Our lot is to find ourselves, to discover
our identity, in the midst of an essential and constitutive contingency. to
be is to be necessary, to be part of the whole, but since there is nothing
that can stand apart from the whole there is no ultimate standpoint
from which to judge others. We are therefore strictly speaking immune
from any tribunal of judgement that would claim the right to be able to
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correct us, to straighten out our being and make it conform to a pre-
given norm of rightness. to be just means to liberate from condemna-
tion, to refuse to hold accountable in moral terms: “that alone is the
great liberation; with this alone is the innocence of becoming restored.”29
With this comes a way to judgement that begins with the affirmation of
mercy as its guiding principle; mercy is the first gesture, the initial step
with which one embarks in search of a rule. Nietzsche’s view as it is ex-
pressed in his late writings thus fulfils a sentiment found in the earlier
text of Assorted Opinions and Maxims: “‘Nature is too beautiful for you
poor little mortal’ – this way of feeling is not rare, yet a few times, by way
of an intimate look at everything human, its abundance, strength, deli-
cateness, inter-woven complexity, it feels to me, as if i must say, in all
humility: ‘humanity also is too beautiful for the men who observe it!’ –
and indeed not only the moral person, but each and every one” (342).
here is a sense of the justice that embraces a love of humanity that in-
verts the traditionally sanctioned power relation separating judge and
judged. to contemplate humankind with fairness one must first refuse to
assume the right to censure it on moral grounds. What is remarkable
about humanity must be recognized and acknowledged with regard to
all of its plurality of forms – even the so-called “evil” human being must
be acknowledged as representing something astonishing, something
that demands they be done justice through the act of acknowledgement,
through recognition that they are more than merely “evil.” Faced with
humankind one must love it all and so seek to do justice to it. One must
remain in the condition of humility that accompanies being astonished
by what humankind is and what it might be. this is amor fati, love of fate,
which is Nietzsche’s formula for greatness (Ecce Homo, “Why i Am so
clever,” 10). such an attitude does not mean we should endorse every-
thing about what we are and welcome a free-for-all in which every mode
of life is equally valued. Nietzsche does not seek to overturn all differen-
tiation in ethical judgement. As we have already noted, he is happy to
remain with the discursive domain of “good and bad” (Genealogy, i, 17).
29 “What does ‘innocence’ mean?” asks Deleuze. it is, he answers, “the truth of multipli-
city” (Nietzsche and Philosophy, 22). it is linked, Deleuze continues, to the thought of
heraclitus and via this to the problem of justice: “heraclitus is the tragic thinker. the
problem of justice runs through his entire work. heraclitus is the one for whom life is
radically innocent and just. he understands existence on the basis of an instinct of play. he
makes existence an aesthetic phenomenon rather than a moral or religious one” (ibid., 23).
the affirmation of pluralism that drives Nietzsche’s conception of justice has its roots in
the tragic, oracular conception that provides the motivation for The Birth of Tragedy and is
retained in the mature thought in the form of “Dionysian pessimism.” see, in connection,
the discussions in chapters 5 and 6.
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thinking in terms of good and bad rather than good and evil, however,
means knowing the difference between when pragmatic justifications
are at stake and when ethical issues really count. it means accepting that
when a society punishes it does so as a condition of its existence not be-
cause it has an unquestionable moral right to do so, that revenge is never
the best course of action, and that mercy is always the better option if
one can afford it. so long as one is tempted to think otherwise and to
find guilty, one is a potential victim of mythology: “Just bear in mind the
notorious witch-trials: at that time, the most perspicacious and humane
judges did not doubt that they were dealing with guilt; the ‘witches’ them-
selves did not doubt it, – and for all that guilt was lacking” (Genealogy, iii,
16). All judgement, in other words, is framed within webs of cultural
beliefs permeated by the primitive tendency to find easy reasons for the
justification of punishing. there is, however, no natural (i.e. pre-given
and absolute) justice. Justice, as mercy and creation, must find its way, it
cannot be given it.
the dubious attempt in The Antichrist aside, one should not expect too
much by way of ostentatious showiness from Nietzsche’s justice. “Great
events,” zarathustra notes, tend to be quiet, largely invisible things
(Zarathustra, ii, “On Great events”). they are altogether more subtle
than the storming of palace gates or the pulling down of a measly tyrant’s
statue or cursing, acts which often look impressive enough but generally
change little and still less often change them for the good. “the greatest
events – they are not our loudest, but on the contrary our stillest hours.
Not around the inventor of new noise: around the inventor of new values
the world turns itself; noiselessly it turns itself” (ibid.). As i have argued,
creativity is legislative because it is transformative: the creator is the per-
son who takes us in thought to a place from which we can never return
unchanged, who shows us a familiar landscape in a new and unforgetta-
ble light, who challenges irrevocably how we think of ourselves and
thereby creates the possibility of new ways of valuing and new experi-
ments of living. On this view, the invention of values trumps all other
forms of agency for change. the creation of values, in short, is the ulti-
mate political act – and this political act is cataclysmic precisely to the
extent that it is at the time of its coming to dominance something un-
seen, unheard, unremarked. here is an invitation to a new politics of
subtlety. this is a politics that seeks subtly to undermine the norm
through the creative pursuit of refashioning values. it seeks thereby a
new justice that is never merely a revolution that changes rulers, but
rather one that registers itself as a change in us.
in its affirmation of this conception of legislation, Nietzsche’s thought
completes its own specific kind of revolution. this revolution returns us
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to the thought of myth that occupies his first book, The Birth of Tragedy.
there, artistic creation (genuine metaphysics) makes possible the rein-
vigoration of a sense of myth that, in turn, can be put to service in fash-
ioning a rejuvenated culture capable of overcoming the stale emptiness
of Alexandrian modernity. Nietzsche’s embracing of naturalistic histori-
cal philosophy in Human, All Too Human sunders myth. Yet, even as he
seeks to expose the presuppositions of the primitive illogic at work in the
heart of metaphysics and modern culture alike, Nietzsche does not es-
cape from myth’s enchantment.30 his articulation of an ethics founded
in the individual creation of values indeed testifies to the fact that he
is driven to acknowledge the impossibility of liberation from myth.
Naturalism initiates the possibility of an overcoming of metaphysics. in
the Genealogy this possibility is given perhaps its most powerful expres-
sion with an account of human identity, values, and intellectuality that
has no need of first principles, divine origins, or metaphysics, proffering
instead a full-blown philosophy of power. At the same time, naturalism
threatens a suspension of authority that brings about the nihilistic loss of
faith in all values.31 the thought of the overman and the creative ethic
that Nietzsche subsequently formulates, an ethic that celebrates power as
mercy and affirms creation as giving and suffering, counters nihilism. it
does so, however, only by reinstating an analogue of the oracular power
of insight that The Birth celebrates as metaphysics. the creator of values
(that is, the real philosopher) is a commander, but the power of such
commanding needs must be invisible to the commanded in order to be
what it is. in this sense, philosophical thought must make its bid to take
us over. it must achieve its end by colonizing us before we are aware of
30 Nietzsche’s thought is characterized in an essential way by a constant recognition of

this. One needs here to recall a passage cited earlier from Daybreak: “We still draw the con-
clusions of judgments we consider false, of teachings in which we no longer believe – our
feelings make us do it” (Daybreak, 99). As creatures of the passions we are driven by habits
of judgement from which we cannot escape. Myth, in this regard, is inescapable. “the
greater the enigma, the more mystery, the better, or so says the spiritually healthy man”
(thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul, 90). the central question is what one
makes of myth in the light of the acknowledgement of its inescapability and, indeed, its
positive value. it is this point that allows for some important insight into the vexed question
of Nietzsche’s relation to the enlightenment. Reason cannot answer our most demanding
need: the need for the endowment of some kind of sense to life. this is the point of
Nietzsche’s discussion in the third essay of the Genealogy. the human animal is the suffering
animal and this suffering does not spring from the mere fact that what lives must endure
pain but from the need to invest pain with significance. Modern reason (science and critic-
al scholarly understanding) cannot posit values and hence cannot provide the kind of
sense capable of fulfilling this demand.
31 see chapter 2, section 3.
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the event. We are changed by the creator’s transformative power, mould-

ed in his or her image as willing accomplices. in this way, Nietzsche
carves out a naturalism that, in seeking to go beyond good and evil but
not to transcend good and bad, must of necessity return us to the realm
of myth. At it most excessive, this return erupts in the polemic of The
Antichrist and its attempt to invoke the oracular power of the realm of
“life itself” in condemnation of the church. Nietzsche’s first attempt at
revaluation founders on the limits sketched out so perceptibly by his own
thought. Authority cannot be deduced. even the liberal “agreement” of
a social compact is coercion; value-neutrality is an illusion. this is be-
cause the relation between commanded and commander cannot be ana-
lysed from a standpoint exterior to it. there are no disinterested parties,
since we are always already commanded and commanding beings.
We are, Nietzsche emphasizes, driven by the will to truth. this means
that we are commanded by an imperative that we must follow simply in
virtue of being who we are. With this conjoining of knowing and valuing,
a question is posed. Does naturalism signal the end of metaphysics, or is
it merely another articulation of its logic? if metaphysics is ethics at its
worst, as much of Nietzsche’s thought often implies, then in pursuing its
own ethics his thinking does not seek to stand simplistically “outside” of
metaphysics any more than it endorses the naivety of a purportedly pure
or enlightened “reason” supposed to occupy a position immune from
the incursions of myth. Nietzsche’s naturalism can, in this regard, be
seen as the most striking manifestation of the struggle that characterizes
what Adorno and horkheimer characterized as the dialectic of enlight-
enment.32 in this dialectic, reason, seeking to escape from myth, inexo-
rably recapitulates the very logic it overtly scorns. enlightenment, which
was born out of the spirit of liberation from tyranny, recoils into a repres-
sion no less mythical and no less obdurate for its being performed in the
name of science. Nietzsche’s incursion into this dialectic is thinking at its
most surprising and creative. As historical philosophy, naturalism seeks
to overcome the domain of traditional metaphysics in the liberating spir-
it of enlightenment; but as resurgence of myth it makes manifest the
impossibility of such liberation attaining completeness, unless it is in
the guise of illusion and falsehood or the excess that characterizes The
Antichrist’s regression into an essentialist metaphysics.
32 see Adorno and horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
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Conclusion
What c an be learnt from Nietzsche concerning our domi-

nant conceptions of justice and law? even a relatively cursory glance re-
veals Nietzsche as highly critical of commonly accepted notions of justice,
and of the political movements associated with them. On the one hand,
he has little time for socialism and its egalitarian articulation of justice,
which is arguably one of the most powerful and in many ways most con-
structive political forces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 he
is equally critical, and perhaps more perceptive,2 in his discussions of the
more general political transformations associated with the culture of
burgeoning nineteenth century capitalism – not least the rise of mass
representative democracy.3 What is common to both the rise of capitalist
power and socialist reaction, however, is the dominant social milieu with-
in which they develop: that of liberal modernity.4 this is a milieu in
which the increasing power of industrial capital occurs within a synthesis
of powerful and contradictory tendencies. Liberal modernity is a world
1 consider in this context the Labour Party’s creation of the National health service
in the united Kingdom, one of the most powerful and positive forces of radical change in
twentieth-century British history.
2 it must be said that many of Nietzsche’s critical remarks concerning socialism de-
pend more on assertion than argument. they exhibit, in short, a bourgeois suspicion of
the political radicalism, connected with the working classes fashioned by the forces of
industrial Revolution, that is not untypical of other nineteenth century thinkers – not least
utilitarian liberal J.s. Mill, with whom Nietzsche clearly (and often with good cause) feels
himself to have little or nothing in common.
3 i have offered some consideration of Nietzsche’s attitude to modernity and capital in
Nietzsche’s Economy (see chapters 1–2). For the most unrestrained, polemical treatment of
Nietzsche in relation to socialism see Lukács, The Destruction of Reason.
4 i am tempted here to recall a comment once made to me by a long-time socialist
friend and colleague at cardiff university, Barry Wilkins: “Marxists are the truest liberals.”
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dominated by vehicles of mass communication concentrated in the

hands of powerful individuals (for example the daily papers Nietzsche is,
on occasion, so dismissive of), yet also a world in which political resis-
tance is provoked; it is a world of industrialization and shifting power
relations, a scenario in which egalitarian democratic attitudes and politi-
cally representative institutions develop against the backdrop of power-
ful conservative forces. As noted in the introduction, a good deal of
interesting critical work has been devoted to considering the ways in
which Nietzsche’s thought can contribute to debates about the nature of
modern liberal-democratic social orders. Nevertheless, in many ways
Nietzsche stands outside the terrain that characterizes such discussion.
this is not because Nietzsche’s writings are “apolitical,” as some have
mistakenly argued.5 it is rather because Nietzsche’s thoughts on the na-
ture of law and justice point beyond the very tradition of liberal-democratic
debate, and thus beyond the terms in which much discussion of the poli-
tics of his thought remains mired.6 Nietzsche’s thought provokes doubt
in the progressive potential of the model of enlightened, liberal reason
associated with Kant.7 it questions the degree to which a rationally
directed model of social order necessarily results in political emancipa-
tion. these things are well enough recognized. But Nietzsche also ques-
tions the worth and very possibility of such emancipation and invites us
to rethink emancipation in creative terms that challenge the legitimacy
of moral certainties. Nietzschean pluralism is not liberal pluralism. it
neither seeks nor requires reasoned consensus as the basis of authority,
but cultivates dissent and struggle as virtues. it does not endorse a con-
ception of tolerance intended only to serve as a negative condition of
political life that enables the private citizen to pursue their own ends. As
opposed to liberal tolerance, Nietzsche endorses a conflict-producing
pluralism wherein constant experiment threatens the incorporation and
colonization of the stronger by the weaker. Nietzchean thought does not
lead us to embrace the ideal of a world characterized by the harmonious
co-operation of all in a common pursuit of freedom. it seeks to cultivate
an understanding of the need for many freedoms, of diverse expressions
of empowerment which are likely to be disruptive and disturbing to the
5 see the introduction for some discussion of these.

6 in this regard, my own approach is close to that of christa Davis Acampora and Don
Dombowsky.
7 Kant’s formulation of enlightenment presents probably the most powerful articula-
tion of the case for a politically progressive agenda of enlightened rationality. see “An
Answer to the Question: What is enlightenment?,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on
Politics, History, and Morals.
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Conclusion 221
status quo. All this requires the development of a sense of the value of
mercy, of a rethinking of the terms of our moral and political language.
We must, for example, desist from criminalizing the criminal, for in this
way we affirm our own power as mercy – and in this affirmation power
reveals itself as the potential for generosity and the strength for forgive-
ness.8 understood thus, power becomes a virtue. it is for this reason that
habermas rightly echoes horkheimer and Adorno’s well-known charac-
terization of Nietzsche as “one of the ‘black thinkers’ of the bourgeoisie.”9
Nietzsche’s thought, in other words, is disturbing. it disrupts received
notions of what is politically desirable and because of this cannot be eas-
ily recuperated to satisfy the goals of contemporary political discourse.
in simple terms, the central tenets of Nietzsche’s philosophy not only
involve criticism of the liberal political culture of modernity and all that
is associated with it, but also present a fundamental challenge to liberal
modernity’s central presuppositions concerning the nature of individu-
ality, value, and social progress: all things that liberalism associates with
the pursuit and fulfilment of human freedom.
We have already seen in chapter 5 that Nietzsche considers freedom to
be possible in so far as it is understood as a creative rebellion against
dominant mores in pursuit of the fashioning of values. this concept of
freedom, Nietzsche tells us in Twilight of the Idols, must be contrasted to
the illusory one celebrated by the liberal tradition. Genuine freedom
emerges from struggle, and struggle is indeed something that is manifest
in the battles that have been fought to secure liberal political structures.
One should not, however, mistake the one for the other: “Liberal institu-
tions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained … they level moun-
tain and valley and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly and
hedonistic – every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them.
Liberalism: in plain words, herd-imbrutement” (Twilight, “skirmishes of
an untimely Man,” 38). in other words an achieved liberal political cul-
ture is a culture in which the most regressive, brutal human propensities
for conformity to oppressive norms are encouraged. But the struggle to
secure a liberal political culture is another matter altogether. in the lib-
eral’s battle against the norm, which occurs as a necessary characteristic
of such struggle, freedom is truly promoted. One should not, however,
mistake what is striven after (the goal, i.e. liberal ideals and institutions)
for the source of the freedom that is thereby promoted. the connection
8 For this reason, one might add, Nietzsche is never as far away from the christian
tradition as he often would have us believe.
9 see habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 106. see, also, Adorno and
horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 117.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 221 2013-09-20 11:36:17

between liberal values, liberal justice, and freedom is, in other words,
contingent; freedom is fostered by liberalism and endures at its hands
only so long as the norms the liberal seeks to overcome in his or her
battle against conservatism endure. Once liberalism becomes the norm,
struggle ceases and the liberal conformity that ensues becomes coercion
pure and simple. the power to create values, which Nietzsche holds to
be the sign of authentic freedom, is thus initially and accidentally culti-
vated by liberal forces but is ultimately sacrificed to the administrative
structures that a victorious liberal ethos evolves in order to maintain it-
self. Liberalism triumphant, in short, is oppression. For Nietzsche, liber-
alism, however “civilized” and bourgeois or modern it may appear to be,
threatens reversion to the brute injustice typical of the most primitive
communal orders dominated by the morality of custom. Liberalism thus
has a tendency to majoritarianism no less than other dominant social
forms hitherto.10 As we have seen in chapter 4, contemporary liberal
culture, according to Nietzsche’s interpretation, reflects this primitive
element: it still seeks to punish and make guilty, and is driven by a ten-
dency to bogus moralistic justification in its demonization of the so-
called “criminal.”
Nietzsche’s ideas lead, however, to criticisms of liberal thought that
dig deeper than the above points, for they take us to the heart of the
presuppositions at work within its conceptions of freedom and justice.
From John Locke or J.s. Mill to such notable recent figures as Friedrich
hayek or John Rawls, liberalism can be characterized by its faith in the
individual conceived of as an essentially autonomous, rational entity en-
dowed with the ability to make choices. such a conception of the indi-
vidual gives rise to an essentially negative conception of freedom. the
freedom that the individual can enjoy is regarded as a given capacity
that springs effortlessly from its source and hence stands in need only of
defence from the threat of incursion by powers external to it. understood
thus, the individual’s essence resides in their status as a morally account-
able being whose just desert is measured according to the degree of ef-
fort put into the project of acquisitive self-advancement. the goods of
the world are, on this view, the legitimate possessions of “the industrious
and rational.”11 All freedom requires for the liberal is placing institu-
tional limits on the degree of coercion that can be exercised over the
individual either by others or by the institutional power of the sovereign
10 in this, one can detect in Nietzsche a similar anxiety to that expressed by J.s. Mill’s
phrase the “tyranny of the majority” (see On Liberty). Nietzsche, as already noted, is how-
ever no fan of Mill.
11 Locke, Second Treatise of Government, section 34.
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Conclusion 223
state itself. the second of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, the work
that stands at the origins of liberal thought, offers a good illustration of
this. Locke, echoing aspects of the thought of thomas hobbes,12 holds
that the legitimate state comes into being as a result of rational individu-
als situated in a “state of nature” coming together and making a social
pact for reasons of mutual self-interest. the state of nature is a condi-
tion devoid of the institutions of civil government but populated by in-
dividuals endowed with autonomous rational ability. Rational ability is
taken primarily to be a matter of self-interest. in turn, legitimate govern-
ment for Locke derives its authority from the same condition that char-
acterizes a freely chosen contract as it would be entered into in the state
of nature: it depends upon agreement. Government is held to be an
extension of principles of what is deemed “natural right.” Natural right
presupposes basic principles of justice rooted in the concept of ex-
change, which provides the principle whereby a wrong suffered by the
individual situated in the state of nature can be justifiably compensated.
the principle of natural justice states that an eye or its equivalent can be
taken in compensation for suffering the loss of an eye. since, as Locke
famously argues, the self-interested individual is hardly the best judge
concerning the degree of compensation appropriate for the injustices
he or she may suffer at the hands of others, a third party is required to
ensure fairness in the dealings of disputants. this requirement is met by
the institution of civil government. the state fulfils its proper function
only so long as it defends principles of equal treatment for all based
upon principles of natural right: “Where there is no longer the admin-
istration of justice, for the securing of men’s rights, nor any remaining
power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the ne-
cessities of the public, there certainly is no government left.”13 On the
Lockean account, natural justice is held to precede civil society such
that it constitutes the legitimacy of proper governance. Justice is, in this
way, presupposed to be a universal, unmediated and ahistorical condi-
tion rooted in an equally timeless principle of exchange. to put it an-
other way, the principle of “an eye for an eye” is not, for Locke, an
achievement of culture forged out of social practices and the conflicts of
interest that characterize them, but is rather a naturally existing condi-
tion that serves to ground the legitimacy of just political practice and
the institutions most suited to it.
12 see hobbes, Leviathan.

13 Locke, Second Treatise of Government, section 218.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 223 2013-09-20 11:36:17

Rawls’s search for fundamental principles of justice in A Theory of

Justice replicates the logic of Locke’s position, albeit in modified form.
hayek’s well-known articulation of the notion of liberty likewise depends
upon similar presuppositions.14 All take freedom to be a given and jus-
tice to be a matter of elaborating and managing the pluralistic worldview
that ensues from this given. One can consider, in this context, hayek’s
typically liberal dismissal of what he calls “inner” freedom15 and even
more emphatically “metaphorical freedom”16 (the “freedom to do what
i want”) as unworthy and dangerous notions in the context of political
theory. Political questions are, for him, conceived as having an essen-
tially formal nature – and they have this because they can be elaborated
on the basis of a conception of individual freedom that is essentially un-
problematic. the subject is taken as being already endowed with the
propensities that make liberty something that can be realized through
no more than the governmental administration of conditions limiting
14 see Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Although Rawls does not endorse the Lockean conten-
tion that civil order springs from an actual social compact, for him a truly free and just so-
ciety would take the same shape that self-interested individuals situated behind a “veil of
ignorance” that rendered them unaware of their place in the social order would rationally
choose to inhabit. Justice, in other words, can be derived from an autonomous principle
that exists independently of the contingencies of history and society and gains its legitim-
acy from this insulation. this conception of rational agency likewise lies at the heart of the
conception of freedom that economic liberals such as hayek defend (see The Constitution
of Liberty). Whatever the differences between Rawls, Locke, and hayek, for the latter, too,
what is paramount is an account of freedom insulated from the vicissitudes of social strug-
gle and any ensuing contestations over meaning that might arise from them. Freedom is
“that condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible”
(The Constitution of Liberty, 11). it has “a distinct meaning and … describes one thing and
one thing only” and this thing is “varying in degree but not in kind” (ibid., 12). We are
able, in other words, to think of freedom in a manner that is immune to the incursions and
revisions that might otherwise be wrought by historical forces. Freedom, on this view, has
an authentic, unified, and unchanging sense. in turn, and despite his expressing reserva-
tions about making such distinctions, hayek deems liberty to be an essentially negative
concept rather than a positive one. the word “freedom,” in short, is held to delineate a
neutral space in which the individual, unmediated by social and historical forces, is set at
liberty to roam in search of its own ends and satisfactions. the liberal state, in turn, gains
its legitimacy in so far as it functions as the impartial administrator of this space. A view of
this kind presupposes a subject endowed with the capacity for choice, one who is by defin-
ition “free” to engage in the pursuit of the goods associated with the accruement of per-
sonal wealth. in this regard, hayek’s characterization of what makes for a “progressive
society” – his theory of liberty, in other words – is primarily economic (The Constitution of
Liberty, 42ff).
15 hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 14.
16 ibid., 16. When people confuse freedom with empowerment liberty, hayek argues,
becomes identified with wealth (ibid., 17).
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Conclusion 225
the degree of coercion that may be exercised over the autonomous indi-
vidual who has been given the capacity for the free pursuit of personal
advancement by a generous nature.17 A Nietzschean account, in con-
trast, turns the order of relations between liberty and justice, on the one
hand, and culture and history, on the other, upside down. Nature is nei-
ther a realm of law nor does it contain principles of natural justice.
exchange itself is a cultural achievement fashioned accidentally in the
communal realm of custom. in so far as we are law-like beings we are
thus always already creatures who have been rendered in terms of social
norms. the creation of norms is a direct outcome of concrete practices
that constitute subjectivity. Neither law nor justice nor the subject they
concern can be called “natural” or autonomous conditions in any sense:
they are (accidentally) created ones. their creation, Nietzsche is keen to
emphasize, is indebted to primitive conditions from which it is hard to
escape – it is mired in blood and violence. such conditions are expres-
sions of power relations. With this insight, the neutral space of the
Lockean state of nature, into which liberalism plants its conception of
the state and law, withers. the formalization of customs into law-like
practices, and such practices into what are subsequently deemed to be
just, does not emanate from naturally existing principles that determine
what is fair, but is rather a consequence of power struggles between com-
peting interests that have been wrought in the realm of culture. history,
in short, is paramount in Nietzsche’s elucidation of our understanding
of what is just or otherwise.
Freedom, in turn, as Nietzsche conceives it, stands in stark opposition
to the negative conception that characterizes the liberal’s attitude.
Liberty is not a neutral space of possibility for action through which a
rationally endowed deliberative subject moves as a kind of autonomous
causal force. One does not simply have freedom as a natural endowment
of selfhood. One must cultivate and thereby attain it. in turn, such at-
tainment expresses itself as the feeling of empowerment. Freedom, in
short, is not a negative condition - not “freedom from,” as liberal theory
deems it – but “freedom to.”18 Freedom of this kind must be made and
constantly re-made in a continual struggle with the norm. the self must,
for this reason, be in continual strife, both with the dominant norms of
social order and its own dominant habits of thought and judgement.
One does not, on this account, gain fulfilment by amassing resources
17 One might consider here the work of Adam smith, whose thought is a powerful in-
fluence on hayek.
18 Freedom in this sense is concretely experienced: “to will one’s liberation [from the
norm] is to feel one’s freedom” (thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul, 94).
25660_Sedgwick.indb 225 2013-09-20 11:36:17

and wealth with a view to the efficient preservation of one’s own discrete
and narrow interest. to attain selfhood is to be engaged in constant over-
expenditure, to be a living sacrifice in pursuit of creation – and this cre-
ation concerns, above all, the making of values. the authority of such
values cannot, however, be deduced nor is success the proof of their ve-
racity, for values are rooted in the contingencies of life.
in its exposure of the essential contingency underlying our dominant
beliefs about legitimacy in terms that trace that contingency to the heart
of our valuing practices, Nietzsche’s thought is thus itself a kind of unset-
tling question mark. it is here that we must take what inspiration we can
from him. Nietzsche’s inestimable importance as a thinker of values re-
sides in the exposure of this contingency. this exposure is inexorably
political and social in import. his thought points to the constitutive role
of practices in the world of human meaning; to the essential element of
chance that human life must confront; and to the absence of ultimate
authority, which obliges us to seek the positively negative virtues of ex-
perimentalism and mercy. such virtues are positive in that they seek a
standpoint beyond rancour and revenge, a standpoint that affirms the
justice of plurality. they are negative in that in order to experiment, the
experimenter must never be happy with what they believe and have, and
in so far as the person of mercy must negate all desire for compensation
in order to be merciful. these virtues often strain toward the kind of self-
critical reflexivity that horkheimer and Adorno justly praised when criti-
cizing the instrumentalization inherent within the unreflective project
of enlightenment. Nietzsche’s return to the oracular bears witness to the
clouded condition that besets human reason. it illustrates the impossibil-
ity of the dream of a “pure” enlightenment capable of emancipating it-
self entirely from myth. Nietzsche’s recognition of the need to affirm
something beyond the confines of instrumental “reason,” something
that reaches beyond the totalizing and yet limited ambitions of fetishized
“method,” points to the irreducible element in thought – to the fact that
our virtues cannot be causally elucidated without remainder. in seeking
to think the problem of creation as the problem of values, Nietzsche
gestures to the sinister and unrecoverable condition underlying our es-
teeming nature – and with that, to the fact that mercy is never something
that emerges out of pure light.
25660_Sedgwick.indb 226 2013-09-20 11:36:17

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25660_Sedgwick.indb 231 2013-09-20 11:36:17

25660_Sedgwick.indb 232 2013-09-20 11:36:17
Index
action, 25, 34, 41, 41n26, 57, 59, 67, bad, 74, 78, 103, 144, 190, 200, 201,
104n2, 105, 108, 111, 114, 115, 208, 210, 215, 216, 218
116, 117, 122, 123, 124n16, 127, bad conscience, 83n5, 163, 163n5,
147n2, 165, 168, 185, 225 165
Adorno, theodor W., 11, 107n6; on becoming, 18, 45, 60, 61, 76, 96, 118,
Nietzsche, instrumental reason and 134, 152, 165, 180; innocence of,
enlightenment, 12n34, 14, 35, 218, 110, 112, 215
221, 221n9, 226 body, 18, 58n7, 69, 70, 72, 74, 81,
agency, 124, 127; and consciousness, 86n8, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96n19, 97,
185, 187; and values, 216; and lib- 100, 104, 105, 124, 132, 133, 135,
eralism 224n14. See also freedom 150–4, 159, 173, 176, 185, 186,
Aeschylus, 19, 21, 25, 28, 28n10, 29, 187, 192, 202, 204, 206, 211, 213.
30, 34 See also communal body
ancestors, 42, 54, 56, 64, 67, 77, 82, bourgeois, 5, 31, 34, 161, 163, 222
83n5, 90, 92, 95, 130, 133, 160, 163 Bull, Malcolm, 7
animal, 54, 57, 60, 65, 66, 67, 73, 78,
79, 80, 90, 92, 110, 115, 126n17, calculation, 80, 84, 95, 141, 160, 194
130, 131, 153, 167n15, 172, 174, capitalism, 219
180. See also human animal cartesianism, 198n4
Ansell-Pearson, Keith, 8, 9 christianity, 4, 14n37, 119n12, 165,
Apollo/Apollonian, 16–22, 24–8, 30, 169, 170, 188n44, 189, 202, 203,
32, 33, 36, 38, 39, 40, 51, 52, 53 210, 211; Nietzsche’s curse on, 13,
Arnold, Mathew, 16 14, 212–14
aristocratic polis, 173, 173, 198n6 church, 13, 119, 196, 199, 201, 203,
art, 11n33, 16–19, 21, 30–8, 38n20, 206, 207, 210, 212
40, 41, 50, 53, 54, 54n1, 55, 176, civilization, 26, 67, 68
179; monological, 179 colonization, 166, 190, 220
asceticism, origins of, 132, 153 communal body, 70, 72, 86, 92, 105,
ascetic priest, 167n15, 199, 213–14 125, 132, 140n30, 173
25660_Sedgwick.indb 233 2013-09-20 11:36:17

234 Index
compensation, 89, 117, 120, 134, 153, 156, 157, 160–2, 164, 169,
136, 141, 144, 223, 226 171n22, 185, 188, 189, 222, 225
conscience, 97, 101, 103, 121, 136;
see also bad conscience death of God, 166n14, 171n23
consciousness, 17, 18, 40, 45, 51, 65, debt, 136, 136
99, 103, 122, 123, 126, 126n17, decadence, 204, 210
150, 152, 152n5, 154, 157, 165, Deleuze, Gilles, on ressentiment,
185–7; Apollonian, 18; Alexandrian, 163n13; and the dice throw of the
39, 40; false, 45, 51. See also self- unexpected, 167n16; on inno-
consciousness cence, multiplicity and pluralism,
conway, Daniel W., 9 215n29
creation/creator(s), 144, 149, 150, democracy, 5, 219
152, 156, 164–7, 170, 176, 178n27, Dionysus/Dionysian, 16–21, 23–7,
179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 186, 188– 30–4, 38, 40, 52, 53, 71, 149, 176,
95, 198, 201, 207, 213, 216, 217, 178–82, 182n35, 211, 215n29
225, 226 divine justice, 39, 45, 52
creditor-debtor relationship, 135, drive(s), 9, 10, 13, 47n29, 49, 50, 54,
137, 140, 141 57, 58, 64, 65, 68, 73, 74, 74n16,
criminal, 23, 27, 101–4, 110–20, 124, 78, 79, 83n5, 89, 90, 91, 93, 96n19,
128, 137, 142, 145, 165, 170, 221, 97, 99, 100, 101, 105, 107, 108,
222. See also pale criminal, the 119, 111, 121, 125, 125, 128, 130,
criminality, as characteristic of free- 132, 152, 153, 157, 159, 167n15,
thinker, 141, 144, 156 172, 175, 187, 206, 211, 214
criminal law, 112 duties, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 162
cruelty, 68, 89, 97, 98, 106, 107, 134,
190 eagleton, terry, 12; and Nietzsche’s
cult, 71, 72. See also religion naturalism, 127n18; and
culture, 9, 13, 20, 25, 28, 29, 39, 40, Nietzsche’s overman 191n48
42, 44n27, 45, 46, 51, 52, 57, 65, economy, 126, 167n15, 196
67, 68, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, education, 37, 113, 163, 164, 180
89, 91, 92, 96, 111, 112, 121, 125, ego, 62, 90. See also i; self
127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 141, enlightenment, 4, 14, 35, 55, 71, 212,
142, 150, 151, 154, 159, 161, 163, 217n30, 218, 220n6, 226
165, 170, 172, 175, 177, 178, 184, epistemology, 3, 180, 181n32
186, 196, 198, 207, 211, 217, 219, equality, 12, 25, 80–9, 91n13, 93,
221, 222, 223, 225; modern, 5, 8, 101, 129, 134, 137, 176, 205
32, 31, 34, 36, 37, 46, 51, 150, 161, equivalence, 13n36, 66, 81, 85, 89,
163, 219, 221, 223; tragic (Greek), 90, 116, 133, 135, 140, 142, 144;
16, 28n11, 38, 45, 51, 52 and mercy, 194
custom, 10, 62, 64–70, 72–4, 76–8, ethics. See mercy; morality; morality of
81, 85, 87, 130, 131, 141, 144–6, custom
25660_Sedgwick.indb 234 2013-09-20 11:36:17

Index 235
europe(an), 28, 102, 102n21 209, 211, 214; see also Apollo,
evil, 72, 76, 101, 103–5, 130, 144, Dionysus
149, 157–63, 166, 190, 194, 201, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 25, 29,
215, 216, 218 176, 180
exchange/exchangers, 13n36, 66, 67, good, 72, 74, 76, 78, 99, 102, 105,
70, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 107, 108, 109, 11, 113, 118, 122,
112, 114, 133n10, 134, 140, 144, 124, 128, 146, 149, 154, 156, 159–
148; origins of justice in, 79, 80, 63, 166, 168, 177, 186, 190, 194,
81, 88, 90, 164, 166, 223, 225 200, 201, 203, 207, 215, 216, 218
exchange-value, 163 good and the just, the, 146, 154, 156,
existence, 3, 8, 16, 18, 20, 21, 27, 29, 167, 191, 192
32, 33, 34, 39–43, 45, 58, 59, 61, great contempt, the, 154, 156, 157, 158
62, 65, 70, 75, 96, 121, 122, 130, guilt, 103, 106, 110, 111, 114, 115,
149, 150–3, 155, 165, 166, 117, 119, 129, 130, 135, 136, 144,
167n15, 196, 198, 199, 204, 205, 153, 154, 167n15, 167n19, 206,
215n29 212, 216
experiment(alism), 75, 174, 194, 220,
226 habermas, Jürgen, on Nietzsche and
exploitation, 6 power, 5, 5n7, 6; Rorty on, 6n9; on
legitimacy, 91n12; on Nietzsche as
fate, 25, 29, 45, 215 “black thinker of the bourgeoisie”
Fink, eugen, on Nietzsche’s natural- 221
ism, 10n29; and the aesthetic in happiness, 24, 34, 35, 41, 150, 154,
Nietzsche, 188n44 155, 202, 205, 206, 208
freedom, 10, 13, 13n36, 53, 106, 108, hard(ness), 150, 168, 193
109n7, 112, 121, 122, 124, 125, hayek, Friedrich, 222, 224
135, 136, 141, 145, 149, 165–77, heidegger, Martin, 11n33; and will to
171n22, 171n23, 181, 181n34, power, 175n24, 191n47
184–9, 191n47, 196–8, 201, 205, heraclitus, 215n29
206, 207, 209, 220–5, 224n14, herd, 84n5, 87, 101, 102, 167, 221
n16, 225n18; fable of intelligible herd morality, 100–2
freedom, 103, 104, 106; and law- historical philosophy, 13, 15, 54–6,
less nature, 71; habermas on 58, 61–3, 75, 76, 90, 96, 129, 150,
Nietzsche and, 6n7 185, 217, 218
free spirit, 175, 197 historical sense, the, 40, 41
future, 43, 44, 108, 109, 132, 149, history, 39, 40, 46, 50, 52, 54–6, 60,
151, 182, 185, 203, 209, 210. See 62, 65, 68, 72, 76, 89, 90, 94, 95–8,
also philosopher(s) of the future 100, 103, 104, 129, 131, 134, 135,
138–40, 149, 165, 169, 171, 172,
God/god(s), 16, 17, 18, 29, 30, 47, 174, 185, 189, 193, 194, 202, 205,
51, 73, 108, 118, 176, 178, 179, 225
25660_Sedgwick.indb 235 2013-09-20 11:36:17

236 Index
hobbes, thomas, 223 135, 137, 140, 141–5, 155, 175n24,

horkheimer, Max. See Adorno, 178, 190, 192–6, 198, 199, 202, 205,
theodor W. 214, 215, 216, 219, 220, 222–6; ori-
human animal, 44n27, 67, 78, 92, gins of, 67, 74, 75, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89,
110, 131, 139, 167n15, 177, 184, 90, 91, 92, 96; and truth, 77, 79, 80;
186, 188, 217n30 and power, 80, 81, 93, 95, 100, 102,
human nature, 38, 61, 125 103, 134; as temporary and unstable
condition, 87; as space of political
“i,” 152n5, 185, 187. See also person- struggle, 94; instinct for justice, 106;
hood; self; subject and innocence, 110, 118; as resisting
ideals, 102, 155, 170, 177 the norm, 110; and free will,111,
identity, 13, 27, 31, 38, 48, 54, 56, 57, 112; as social mechanism, 117; pun-
57n5, 60, 61, 65, 67, 69-73, 78, 89, ishing justice, 119, 120; slave justice,
93, 95, 96, 100, 106, 108, 121, 122, 130, 131; and last man, 160. See also
128, 131, 137, 146, 150, 153, 158, mercy; natural justice
160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 168, 175, judge, 23, 24, 43, 48, 49, 51, 114,
183, 185, 186, 214, 217 118, 157, 158, 168, 170, 171, 189,
individual, 17, 18, 26, 29, 30, 39, 67, 207, 212, 215
70, 71, 80, 81, 82n3, 99, 100, 101, judging/judgement(s), 74, 106, 107–
104, 105, 109, 115, 117, 118, 131, 12, 118, 130, 152, 153, 170, 195,
132, 133, 141, 146, 166, 167, 169, 201, 207, 211, 213– 15
173, 174, 185, 186, 187, 194, 209, justice talk, 10n30, 79, 81, 90, 91, 92,
217, 222, 223, 225 106, 189
individuality, 19, 82n3, 133, 149, 150,
186, 221 Kant, immanuel, 4n3, 60n8; and opti-
injustice, 6, 21, 22, 24, 41, 59, 60, 61, mism, 36n17; transcendentalism, 91;
62, 73, 74n16, 75, 76n17, 84, 86, and freedom, 104n2, 171; as “philo-
106, 154, 182, 191, 196, 198, 199, sophical labourer,” 181n33; in rela-
222 tion to the will to truth, 184; Rorty
innocence, 106, 108, 110, 112n8, on Nietzsche and, 200; on beauty,
118, 160, 195, 206, 212, 214, 215, 213; and enlightenment, 220
215n29 Kaufmann, Walter, on Nietzsche as
instinct, 4n3, 35, 106, 132, 210, 212 enlightenment thinker, 4
instinct for justice, 106 Knoll, Manuel, 12
intellect, 101, 141, 153, 176, 178 knowledge, 27, 29, 31, 33–5, 37, 38,
internalization, 163, 163n12, 190 42–6, 48, 49, 51, 55, 60, 61, 62, 64,
italians, 106 74, 75, 98, 107– 10, 112, 117, 180,
181n31, 181n34, 183, 211
justice, 10n30, 11n33, 12–13, 12n36;
and tragedy, 16, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, labour, 66, 117
29–34, 39, 41–3, 45–53, 48n30, 60, language, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 32, 33,
62, 74, 76, 76n17, 86n8, 97, 99, 58, 61, 80, 1o5n4, 126, 187
25660_Sedgwick.indb 236 2013-09-20 11:36:17

Index 237
Lampert, Lawrence, on second 145, 154, 159, 178, 192, 197, 201,
Untimely Meditation and justice, 207, 226
48n30; on Zarathustra, 15, 147; on measure(r)/measuring/measurement,
Nietzsche’s aesthetics, 179 55, 64–7, 90, 92, 94, 96, 108, 109,
last man, the, 146, 150, 152, 157, 162, 166, 199
160, 161, 163, 177, 199, 208 memory, 41, 131–5; moral memory,
law(s), 6, 7, 12–14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 131, 163n12
25–7, 31–3, 35, 37–9, 45, 50, 52, 53, mercy, 12, 13, 14, 116, 117, 120, 212,
61, 64–87, 96, 97, 100, 101, 110–16, 124, 127, 140, 142, 190, 194, 202,
123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131, 134–6, 206, 207, 208, 211, 215, 216, 217,
138, 140–5, 157, 158, 165, 168, 170, 221, 226
172, 173, 176, 188–90, 192, 194, metaphysics, 13, 16, 32, 39, 45, 53–6,
219, 220, 225. See also natural law 61, 63, 64, 72, 73, 75, 76, 79, 103,
lawless(ness), 16, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 104, 118, 129, 142, 146, 150,
72, 76, 92 175n24, 176, 179, 182, 202, 208,
law court, 43, 113–16, 157, 158 209, 211, 212, 217, 218
law-giver, 176, 182, 183, 187, 212. See method, 3, 4, 31, 35, 107, 183n36, 226
also legislation modernity, 8, 13, 16, 31, 32, 37–40,
“law of life,” 165, 169, 170, 207 45–7, 51, 96, 149, 161, 177, 203,
legislation, 13, 30, 70, 141, 145, 182, 212, 217, 219, 221
190, 192, 212, 216. See also self-leg- monotheism, 179
islation, law- giver Mootz iii, Francis J., 6, 7
liberal(s)/liberalism, 4n2, 5, 6, 8, 9, morality, 21, 26, 31, 32, 38, 39, 62–
12, 37, 80, 115n10, 161, 163, 176, 72, 78, 84, 90, 97, 100, 101, 102,
218–25 104, 108, 109, 117, 124, 127, 130,
life, 6n10, 12, 13, 16, 20, 21, 26, 32, 146, 150, 151, 162, 170– 4, 185,
39–47, 50, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 68, 190, 196, 200, 201, 202, 203, 206,
73, 75–7, 83n5, 96n19, 136, 143, 208n20, 210, 211, 214
152, 154, 155, 156, 161–5, 169, 170, morality of custom, 67, 68, 69, 70, 90,
177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 190, 196, 128, 162, 164, 171
198–211, 208n20, 214, 215, 218 Müller-Lauter, Wolfgang: on Nietzsche
Locke, John, and natural right, 85n7; as thinker of contradictions, 11,
and state of nature, 81, 85n7, 11n33; on Nietzsche, philosophy and
91n14, 225; and liberalism, 222; history, 55n4; on Nietzsche and pow-
on legitimacy of government and er, 131n21, 187n42, 191n47; on
natural justice, 223, 224, 225 Nietzsche and will to truth, 170n20
logic, 54, 56, 57n5, 61, 179 myth, 13, 17, 19, 20, 24–8, 30–2, 35–
love, 97, 148–50, 191, 192, 195, 211, 40, 52, 55, 67, 106, 178, 206, 212,
212, 215 217, 217n30; soul myth, 154
meaning, 39, 50, 69–71, 89, 111, 113, natural justice, 10n30, 80, 85, 223,
122, 129, 133, 134, 138, 139, 141, 225
25660_Sedgwick.indb 237 2013-09-20 11:36:18

238 Index
nature, 9, 16–21, 23, 26, 27, 31, 35, philosopher(s) of the future, 172,
43, 44, 52, 56, 57, 59, 68, 70, 71, 176–81, 184
72, 76, 79, 92, 95, 96, 103–6, 108, pity, 12, 102, 155, 180, 207, 210
125, 130, 131, 149, 167n15, 172, Plato, 33, 34, 117
173, 174, 176, 177, 180, 184, 189, pluralism, 12, 196, 220
206, 210, 215, 225. See also second politics, 8, 9, 15, 31, 38, 95, 100,
nature 182n35, 216, 220
nihilism, 7, 63, 154, 165, 212, 217 prehistory, 95, 121
noble/noble morality, 129, 130, 135, Prometheus, 20, 25, 28–31, 28n10, 33
203 promise, 83, 133, 135, 171n22
norm(s), 6n7, 7, 26, 27, 30, 41, 49, psychology/psychological, 54, 56, 61,
52, 57, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 63, 64, 65, 81, 89, 90, 125, 135,
78, 80, 82, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 142, 202
96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, punishment, 13, 14, 22, 23, 53, 86, 97,
105, 107, 110, 113, 116, 119, 120, 100, 102, 110–20, 127–41, 145, 148,
121, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 149, 150, 152, 170, 192, 194, 195
133, 141, 144, 146, 150, 152, 153,
155, 156, 157, 160, 164, 165, 167, Rawls, John, 222; A Theory of Justice,
170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 185, 186, 224, 224 fn14
189, 194, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, reason, 5n43, 25, 26, 27, 31, 37, 55,
208, 212, 216, 221, 222, 225 65, 121, 133, 152n5, 154, 155,
172, 173, 175, 180, 185, 187, 202,
objectivity, 45–51, 75, 136 205, 217n30, 218, 220, 226
Oedipus, 19–27, 22n5, 30, 31, 33 religion, 37, 52, 62–4, 69, 70, 71, 72,
ontology, 3 73, 210
overman, 146, 148–51, 154, 155, 165, responsibility, 13, 41, 103–7, 112,
166, 167, 176, 207, 210, 212, 217 117, 118, 135, 136, 142, 154, 165,
170, 171, 172, 174, 178, 189, 206
pain, 21, 62, 98, 132–4, 136, 141, ressentiment, 129, 143, 163n13, 204
150–3, 159, 160, 177, 178, 199. See revenge, 80, 89, 114, 115, 116, 119,
also suffering 120, 121, 129, 130, 131, 137, 141–
pale criminal, the, 157–160 4, 158, 190, 194, 212, 226
passions, 54, 58, 60, 99, 180, 202, rights, 75, 68, 89, 92, 93–7, 100, 102,
206, 217n30 135–7, 142, 162, 223
personhood, 8, 88, 89, 133, 137, 138, Rorty, Richard: on habermas and
185 Nietzsche, 6n9; on Nietzsche’s “de-
perspectivism, 197 sire for purity,” 200n8
Petersen, Jens, 12 rules, 16, 17, 18, 35, 57, 68, 85, 113,
philosophy/philosophers, 5, 12, 18, 130, 137, 141, 143, 156, 176, 181,
54, 55n4, 63, 147, 147n2, 172, 195
174–8, 181, 181n31, 185, 186, schacht, Richard: on Nietzsche’s natu-
187, 194, 203, 205, 221 ralism, 9–10
25660_Sedgwick.indb 238 2013-09-20 11:36:18

Index 239
science, 26, 31, 35, 36, 45, 64n11, 71, 134, 136, 152, 175, 176, 179, 182,
98, 217n30, 218 192, 197
second nature, 43, 44, 65, 88, 92, 97, thucydides, 91n13, 93n15
100, 172 tradition, 42, 43, 62, 64, 66–73, 78,
self, 10, 18, 92, 97, 107, 124, 125, 81, 85, 87, 92, 115n10, 131, 142,
133, 134, 141, 152, 154, 159, 165, 156, 161, 166, 169, 176, 194
169, 171, 184–9, 192, 205, 225 tragedy, 13, 16–41, 48, 50, 51, 52, 54,
self-creation, 52, 176, 181n32 178, 179n28, 180, 188n44, 212,
self-interpretation, 88, 106, 123, 158, 215n29
159, 193 truth, 7n13, 10n30, 19, 20, 33, 34,
self-legislation, 172, 174, 181n32 36, 41, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54,
self-understanding, 17, 31, 37, 52, 70, 55, 63, 73–6, 76n17, 79, 110, 129,
74, 79, 122, 124, 128, 136, 157, 170, 175n24, 181n34, 182, 183,
171, 183, 192 183n36, 184, 189, 191n48, 196,
selfish(ness), 149 197, 213, 215n29. See also will to
slave morality, 129, 130, 201, 203 truth
socrates, 31, 33, 34, 35, 117, 191n49,
201, 204, 205 values, 3, 10, 13, 15, 38, 46, 76, 90,
socialism, 219 101, 103, 105, 106, 111, 120, 121,
sophocles, 19–28, 30, 34; and lan- 122, 124, 128, 129, 144, 149, 156,
guage, 19, 24; and suffering, 23–4 159, 161–6, 168, 170, 171, 179,
soul, 151–4, 169 181, 183–212, 216, 217, 221, 222,
sovereign individual, 171, 171n22 226
state, the, 3, 4n2, 6, 12, 26, 31, 32, violence, 6, 12, 16, 17, 18, 24, 42, 68,
36, 37, 38, 39, 74, 120, 157, 161, 106, 133, 134, 143, 158, 159, 199,
162, 163, 164, 173, 223, 223n14, 202, 205, 225; of thought, 59, 60,
225; and morality of custom, 162 61, 182
steiner, Rudolph, 8
subject(ivity), 71, 73, 74, 75, 97, 98, will, 25, 26, 27, 74, 97, 103, 104, 108,
100, 135, 138, 140, 141, 164, 168, 109, 11, 12, 113, 122–5, 150, 152,
185, 198n4, 224, 225 153, 181n34, 188, 193, 210
suffering, 21–5, 29, 39, 109, 129, will to justice, 45, 45n48, 49
130, 136, 146, 149, 150, 151, 153, will to power, 6n43, 11n33, 13n36,
156, 158, 159, 160, 167n15, 176, 81, 128, 131, 138, 167n16, 175,
177, 178, 178n27, 214, 217, 217n30 175n24, 182n35, 191n47, 210
superman. See overman will to truth, 76, 109n7, 165, 170,
superstition, 56. See also cult; religion 176, 182–4, 189, 192, 218
thought, 17, 35, 54, 56–61, 63, 67, zarathustra, 15, 146–151, 153–170,
68, 69, 73, 96, 99, 125, 126, 133, 177, 188, 191–4, 207, 216
25660_Sedgwick.indb 239 2013-09-20 11:36:18

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Nietzsche’s Justice

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1 Problems of cartesianism 10 consent, coercion,

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