Nietsche

1 Pages 319 Words

Nietzsche believes the origins of morals coincide with "how responsibility originated"(pg147) with the breeding of "an animal with the right to make promises" (pg 145) and progressed to the manipulation of one group of humanity by another in order to implement morals. It is an attempt to develop an explanation for the existence of ethics and morals. For him, morality and responsibility could only come to exist by these means. In the earlier part of his essay, he speaks of forgetfulness and how it is a “positive faculty of repression” (pg 146) and portrays the inability to forget to a type of mental indigestion. If it were not for forgetfulness then men could not cope with remembering all of the events of their life. However, Nietzsche does believe that memory can be useful in the case of promises because it is the will of the individual that retains the memory. In order for the individual to maintain his promise and ordain the future, man must first undertake and complete the prehistoric labor which Nietzsche has termed “morality of mores” (pg147). This intends that man should be made calculable, regular, and necessary. However these are only a means to an end. The true outcome of the labor is the “sovereign individual … with the right to make promises” (pg 148). Therefore responsibility and promise are the rights of the individual because he posses a free will, control over himself and his fate and therefore has the power to ordain the future through promise. This responsibility becomes so profound that it becomes an instinct, an instinct which the sovereign individual calls his conscience. Therefore the significance of Nietzsche’s statement human beings are animals “with the right to make promises" (pg 145) is a metaphor of the progression of man from a primitive beast to the sophisticated individual capable of shedding his humble beginnings in morality and manipulating the future through promise....