Sections 187 and 188 of Beyond Good and Evil
have a common theme: obedience.
In section 187, Nietzsche notes that a philosopher’s
moral claims reveal his personal psychological profile.
Again, think of Kant, whose categorical imperative
tells us as much about Kant’s personality
as about moral obligation.
Additionally, writes Nietzsche, moral systems
often attempt a task, such as public justification,
revenge, concealment, or self-transcendence.
Nietzsche concludes this short section with
another observation about Kant.
His morality says “my ability to obey is
valuable; you should be like me.”
Thus, Nietzsche writes, “moralities are
also merely a sign language of the affects”
or emotions.
Note that Nietzsche here discusses moralities,
in the plural, rather than morality, singular.
He is giving a natural history of past philosophers’
moral codes, considered independently of their truth.
Also note that for Nietzsche, each moral code
reveals its author’s emotional life and
psychology, his will to power.
We may ask: does this pattern include Nietzsche’s
ruminations on morality here, in this work?
Section 188 continues on the theme of obedience
and discipline.
Every morality is a bit of tyranny, a “long
compulsion,” that is, a self-discipline,
rather than a “letting alone.”
All freedom, all culture, Nietzsche writes,
depend on seemingly arbitrary laws and restraints.
Working under restraint is what is “natural”
to man, contrary to Rousseau’s and others’
celebration of “natural freedom.”
Artists, in particular, know that “letting
alone” is deadly to art—one must obey
in order to create.
We may think here of how the strictures of
the sonnet form enabled Shakespeare to produce
poems of lasting beauty.
Such greatness does not come through free
verse.
All worthwhile things are the result of sustained
obedience, Nietzsche tells us.
The long unfreedom of discipline under ancient
and Christian systems of thought has generated
strength in the European spirit.
This was so, even as such discipline crushed
and stifled other movements of the human spirit.
Here, as in Darwinian biology, Nature is wasteful.
The capricious tyranny of Christianity, interpreting
all experiences in the framework of divine
care and action, has *disciplined* the European
spirit, says Nietzsche.
Such mental slavery is an indispensable means
of spiritual growth.
Every morality requires discipline, narrowed
horizons, the tightening of possibilities,
rather than their opening, that is, “letting
alone.”
In a certain sense, stupidity is a condition
for life and growth.
“You shall obey” is an imperative addressed,
not to individuals, but to peoples, races,
classes, to mankind itself.
In these thoughts on obedience, Nietzsche
makes it clear that he is against a certain
type of freedom, the type he associates with
utilitarians and the Last Man: ever-increasing
freedom from restraint, letting each individual
will go to satisfy its own desires, whatever
they may be.
Rather, he insists on the need for constraint,
rules, and self-discipline.
Laxity with oneself means spiritual decline,
the path to the Last Man.
Nietzsche is searching for a post-Christian
discipline, and he will not find it in democratic
politics, nor in the remnants of modernist
religion.
It will come ultimately from the will to power,
as we will see later in the work.
That’s my summary of and commentary on sections
187 and 188 of Beyond Good and Evil.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.
