Nietzsche looks at society’s assumptions about good, bad, and evil, and asserts that our morality is ill and life-rejecting: more anemic than authentic, passive rather than active, slavish rather than heroic, hand-wringing and indecisive. He argues that it is time to examine the origins of morality and rediscover a morality that is made of sterner stuff. Ultimately, his evaluation of values is less about rejecting one system or advocating another than it is about pointing out that morality and culture are human constructions—not universal truths.

Until recently, pity was considered not a virtue, but a vice. Plato, Spinoza, Kant and other philosophers have, from many places across history and geography, despised it. In our own time, it has been inordinately elevated. Pity is a symptom of a fast-spreading disease that now infects our philosophers and civilization. We are being seduced by a melancholic siren song that leads us to nothingness.

Far from a simple, isolated problem, this pernicious pity is connected to a broader moral understanding that has proven deleterious to societies where it has been imbibed. Pity is part of the modern emasculation of human emotion, part of a complex that is causing us to shy away from Life itself. We lack the courage to press on and take action. Bound by pity-morality, we look backward with a deep exhaustion, and then forward again with sighs of resignation.

We fail to question our moral assumptions, deeply ingrained as they are. We reflexively evaluate the “good man” and the “evil man,” assigning greater value to the former, seeing him as having the greater potential to advance human progress and contribute to society and posterity. But what if there was found in the so-called good man the seeds of his own regression? What if this nice guy morality were actually quite dangerous: comfortable and without risks, something trivial, passive, and, at bottom, resentful? He isn’t “mean,” but he is racked with guilt. His latent magnificence and strength are muzzled and muffled.

Thanks to this “nice guy” malaise, morality itself now stands upon the brink. It’s an undesirable state of affairs, an unprecedented crisis that demands an investigation into the origin of morals in order to discover what’s gone wrong. We must take an honest look at the value of values.

Until recently in human history, the term “good” was reserved for the wealthy and the powerful, not the powerless and destitute, for those with the means to do good, not for the needy who might benefit from those with that power to do good. Thus, the term “good” originally belonged to the aristocrat. Conversely, the word “bad” used to describe the commoner, the poor, the lowly, the ignorant. For a long time, “bad” just meant “simple” or “non-aristocrat.” We see this most clearly in the German language, for example, where “bad” and “simple” are virtually identical (schlecht and schlicht, respectively).

The categories of good aristocrat and bad commoner primed humanity for an unbreachable social distance and hierarchy between the dominant class and “underclass.” The master class (the “good”) enshrined the distinction in language, effectively locking them into place as cultural conventions. Originally, there was no connection between “good” and being nice or altruistic—whatever the fantasies of idealistic moral philosophers might have been.

Over time, aristocratic sensibilities and the distance they created between the master class and the underclass have begun to disintegrate, and hierarchy with it. An antithetical movement has risen up to contest it. We can call it the “herd instinct.” This mental illness now afflicts most of Europe. One of the clearest signs of this illness is how readily “moral” and “altruistic” are used interchangeably. It has become such a basic intuition that most people assume it has always been that way. A survey of the origins of “good” and “bad” reveals something different.

Master morality typically evolves along one of two veins: a knightly aristocracy or a priestly aristocracy. The warrior value systems prioritize physical health and prowess, wealth and glory through war, adventure, and tournaments. The leaders of priestcraft value systems can’t rule by physical might, but they protect their power through more manipulative and sinister tactics. They fashion themselves as gateways connecting commoners to those spiritual powers the plebeians fear and revere most. The priestly aristocracy retains its power by threats of excommunication and cutting them off from access to those powers.

There are often revolutionary movements that run antithetical to the masters and power-holders. The shape these counter movements take will depend on the shape of the value system they are in opposition to (priestly aristocracy or warrior aristocracy).

The heaviest blow, by far, to the holders of power came from the Jews. The Jewish priestly aristocracy is particularly potent and vengeful, but the weak of Jewish society exacted the most stunning revenge against their priestly caste. Instead of going along with the conventional schema of good (i.e., the aristocrat, the happy, beloved of the gods), they reversed it: The poor, the weak, the humble, sick, and helpless are, exclusively, those who are blessed. And the powerful? Woe to you, aristocrats, you wielders of clout: You are evildoers, cursed, and eternally condemned.

There’s no question that the protagonist at the center of this slave revolt was the Jew Jesus of Nazareth. What could shatter the values of aristocrat-is-good-plebeian-is-bad more effectively than a “god on a cross,” willingly sacrificing himself for the salvation of humanity? It was at this juncture in history that the slave revolt began, and slave morality began to supplant master morality. Over the course of 2,000 years, the slave revolt has won the victory, so incrementally that the new mindset has advanced imperceptibly. 

This symbol is so powerful, alluring, corrupting, and dangerous, that it has no rival; it has exacted an exquisitely poisonous revenge against an already spiteful Jewish priestly aristocracy and even supplanted aristocratic morality in general.

A vulgar, plebeian morality has won, and its poison is working its way into all of humanity’s politics. The poison now circulates more subtly and slowly through the Church, but it is because slave morality grew out of the soil of resentment. It is essentially a reaction.

Prior to the slave revolt and ascendancy of slave morality, aristocrats would declare a self-congratulatory “yes” to their lifestyle, and peasants would agree with it by attempting a shallow, vulgar imitation of the aristocratic sensibilities. It was the “bad” to the aristocratic “good.” The aristocrats were good; the peasants were bad, but compliant. Then the slaves took on the task of creativity when they started saying “no,” instead of echoing the aristocratic “yes.” But without any opportunity for action, their revenge was confined to an imaginary realm. This imaginative order, fueled by resentment and untethered to the particularities of life, inexorably led away from the subjective, lived experience of the real world to an objective realm of universals.

As the plebeian began saying “no” to aristocratic conceptions of “good” and “bad,” the words became tinged with morality. “Bad” garnered a moral connotation of evil with the slave revolt, and it was slapped on the “other” aristocratic morality. This is the fruit of an upheaval fueled by resentment.

Over the last two millennia, there has been a dramatic spar between two opposing sets of values: the aristocratic “good and bad” and the vulgar “good and evil.” Slave morality has dominated, with only occasional, short-lived resurgences of aristocratic morality. We see this in the Renaissance’s resuscitation of ancient Roman values—perhaps the most aristocratic society in history. That resuscitation, though, was quickly quashed by popular German and English revolutions often called the Reformation. Another revolution with similar effect was the French Revolution, which violently fragmented Europe’s final aristocracy.

What does the future hold? Will we someday see the aristocratic values of “good and bad” forcefully return—and for more than just a moment? Should we wish for that? It is difficult to come to a simple, ready conclusion. There is danger beyond the era of good and evil in which we find ourselves. The fight between opposites will become increasingly psychological, so perhaps the best thing to do is hold the contradictions within oneself, and let oneself be a battleground where the two sets of ideals can war.

Man is a creature with the capacity both for promise-making and forgetting. Each has its own utility. Active forgetfulness has a protective and custodial function: It clears our mind enough to allow for rest, good manners, incisive thinking. Our minds would be unbearably cluttered if forgetfulness were not present. Without it, joy, happiness, hope, and the present would not be possible. Thus, forgetfulness renders a vital service, one which brings relief and health.

Memory serves as a countervailing force to help us remember certain things, keeping promises chief among them. We refuse to get rid of a promise. We say “I shall do this” or “I will not do that” in the hopes of procuring a preferable future, calculating and acting as if the future were in the present.

In a word, this is the origin of responsibility. For a creature to become capable of making and keeping promises, there must be a certain level of predictability to its behavior. With the help of moral codes and cultural traditions, some semblance of this predictability has been achieved. Of course, at the furthest-most end of this lengthy process of remembering, there is the “sovereign individual,” one-of-a-kind, a powerful and free, highly conscious person whose will is his own. Unlike the majority of people who have already broken or abandoned their promise the moment the words have left their mouths, the sovereign individual is actually competent enough to make a promise. His life is a long chain of unbroken will, and he acts thoughtfully rather than compulsively according to cultural expectations. His word is his bond: to make a promise is to fulfill it. It has become his guiding instinct. And what do we call this instinct? It is called “conscience.”

This is the ripe, sweet fruit at the end of a long and arduous process. The fruit is late in coming, and when it does, it is a puckering sour. How does a human—or humanity more generally—move from animalistic idiocy and absurdity, quick to forget everything, to such a remarkable level of self-possession? The transformation was not a smooth and peaceable one. The process of remembering is full of strife and immense pain. The memories that stay with us the best are invariably the most painful. It is no coincidence that torture, sacrifice, blood, and cults were relied upon in many eras of the past to etch an experience or a lesson into a group’s consciousness. You can identify how forgetful a people has historically been by the severity they employ in their rituals.

Reason, promise-keeping, mastery over fleeting emotions that tempt us to forget, the capacity to reflect: These societal goods have all been dearly bought.

In any society, however primitive, there is always some semblance of a creditor-debtor, buyer-seller dynamic. It’s arguably the grounds on which we consider ourselves superior to other animals. Selling and buying is our oldest interaction and form of organization. From this impulse, we developed concepts of trade and barter, debt and duty, and, more fundamentally, a belief in equivalency. The notion that “everything has its price, and all can be paid for” forms our most ancient—and most naïve—moral intuition about justice.

For most of human history, however, guilt carried no moral component. Guilt simply referred to someone who owed a debt and punishment was a guarantor that the debt would be satisfied. Until relatively recently in human history (the ascendancy of slave morality several millennia ago), the satisfaction was emotional: Even more important to the injured party was the opportunity to justifiably wield power over an offender. Justice was served when the injured party was done venting his anger—usually through violence. The feeling of satisfaction was sufficient. Guilt gained moral significance and force with the growth of slave morality, which saw a debt as a moral failure, and the debtor as a sinner who must be held responsible for his actions. From this development came a new understanding of justice that tried to quantify what was owed and insist on its being paid out.

There’s a certain kind of satisfaction and delight derived from seeing pain inflicted on another—even more so in inflicting it. This is a bitter pill for the “civilized” to swallow, and members of civilized societies deny the impulse within themselves and their culture. Throughout human history (and not all that long ago in Europe), there have been executions and tortures, acts of cruelty that have gone hand-in-hand with festivities. “Without cruelty, no feast.”

The problem of suffering is often put forward as a case against Life, but we should bear in mind the times when the inability to inflict suffering was a far more deprived existence. People found in it an almost magical allure.

The idea seems repulsive to the civilized, but the impulse to witness or even inflict cruelty has not gone anywhere; it has just moved to a psychic, imaginative plane. We see it in some people’s yearning for the suffering of Christ—or at least the idea of it. The aggressive impulse that witnessing suffering satisfies is not as readily available in the civilized world—indeed, the civilized world could not continue if those impulses were indulged. What the civilized do is turn their guilt and aggression inward. Pessimism is among the many manifestations of this urge turned in on itself: The heavens above fill with grim and brooding clouds whenever man feels shame before another man. There is an awareness—even if subconscious—of the cruelty the modern still desires. Its inward expression is shame and guilt because there’s no outlet for its expression.

Asceticism postures as a self-imposed denial of impulses and pleasures for the sake of some higher good to be achieved through deprivation. In truth, asceticism is for the weak, for those with a flaccid will (i.e., the majority of people). Man abhors emptiness; he wants and needs a goal. But he will bend his will toward nothingness before he gives up his will all together.

Asceticism is for the weak and the ill, for those who, unable to master the will, despise it. They see animal impulses as base and evil and do everything they can to tame and dampen them.

The philosopher and intellectual self-impose a kind of deprivation to create an environment that lends itself to clearer thinking. In the weak and anemic (just about everyone), asceticism gives them the opportunity to hide from the world yet feel a sense of moral superiority to it. This sanctified distance is a bastion, protecting them from their own pain and dissatisfaction. For the priest, asceticism is a source of power; it gives him clout to rule his “kingdom of sufferers.” For the saint, it is an excuse to hide away, and make peace with emptiness, or “God,” as he calls it.

Asceticism is a masochistic madness that unnaturally circumscribes all of life (people, historical eras) to the parochial categories of holy renunciation or vanity. Are all our aims and interests to be subjected to this criterion? It assumes a power to sanction or condemn any course of action while also assuming there is no power higher than itself.

As with our current conceptions of good and evil and justice, asceticism is yet another value whose value is questionable.