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Nietzsche begins by saying he thinks humanity doesn’t really know or understand itself. He wants to explore the history of morals and how they evolved, so that we can see if current ideas about what’s “good” and “evil” help us thrive. He suspects they don’t.
In the first essay of his book, Nietzsche talks about how people define good and evil. British psychologists think that morals are something you’re born with, but Nietzsche thinks that’s not true. He says that morality is something you learn from your environment. The way to determine what’s “good” in a society is to look at who has power in it. In Ancient Greece, for example, being strong was considered good because warriors were powerful; they had more power than other people did. However, when priests came into power during the rise of Christianity and started defining what was “good,” they said meekness was good because they were oppressed by knights and wanted revenge against them (Nietzsche calls this priestly morality). To him, this led to bad things happening in Europe as a whole: everyone began thinking only about themselves instead of others. People became miserable because they thought their suffering would get rewarded after death, which Nietzsche finds ridiculous.
Friedrich Nietzsche begins his essay by talking about promises. In order to keep a promise, people have to develop an idea of right and wrong so that they feel guilty if they break their promise and are more inclined to keep it. Many people assume that developing a conscience is good, but Nietzsche thinks the social customs that encourage this development are based on pain, fear, and violence around notions of debt and credit. He then talks about punishment as compensation for breaking a promise when someone doesn’t deliver something in return for what they were owed (debtor). The creditor gets physical satisfaction from seeing others suffer until the debt is paid off (punishment). This aspect of human nature was healthier when people weren’t ashamed of it because historical festivities often included violent components.
Nietzsche thinks that justice is simply about collecting debts. People in a society make promises to behave in certain ways, and when they break their promises, the creditor (society’s legal system) makes them suffer for it as compensation. In ancient societies, people could express aggression by making criminals suffer through some twisted notion of punishment. However, Nietzsche doesn’t think customs necessarily get progressively better over time; rather it depends on who’s in power—and how they shape customs to achieve their aims. Nietzsche thinks that European society uses punishment to teach people not to break laws so they will succeed later in life; however he disagrees with this approach because guilt is unhealthy and causes suffering for no good reason.
Nietzsche believes that humans used to be nomadic predators who killed prey for food. As they formed societies, they began to conquer land and use their aggressive instincts on others instead of animals. However, in modern times, there are no places where people can go to unleash their aggression because it is repressed by Christian values. The repression causes mental anguish and suffering as people begin to torture themselves with guilt for having these aggressive instincts. Nietzsche thinks we have demonized our natural instincts for too long and he wants a shift in thinking so that we don’t suffer anymore from this repression of our instinctual drives.
Nietzsche’s essay “On Ascetic Ideals” focuses on the idea of asceticism, which is a philosophy that advocates abstaining from worldly pleasures in order to focus on spiritual and emotional matters. He wanted to look at where this ideal came from in European culture. Nietzsche saw it as being reflected in Wagner’s art because his later work celebrated things like chastity. However, he preferred Goethe and Hafiz’ poetry because they played with the tension between sensual and spiritual aspects of life, as did Wagner’s earlier works. His later works seemed too focused on preaching his religious views rather than creating great art for him to enjoy them properly. Therefore, he turned to philosopher Kant’s ideas about how we should appreciate art but found them idiotic since Kant thought that people needed a certain distance emotionally or psychologically when viewing art so they could truly appreciate its beauty—but Nietzsche disagreed with this notion completely since he believed that these emotions were what made great art powerful enough for people to be moved by it deeply enough for their lives to change forever after experiencing it (which is what happened when he first read Schopenhauer). Philosopher Schopenhauer also thought that contemplating beautiful artwork was helpful for finding some sort of calmness amidst the chaos in reality; however, Nietzsche thought most people looked at artwork not only for pleasure but also as a way of stirring up their emotions more than calming them down personally (as Schopenhauer might have felt after looking at an artistic masterpiece).
