Explain Nietzsche’s account of the origins of morality. Do you believe he is right in arguing that the origins of freedom and the will can be traced back to a desire to determine guilt and responsibility and to punish?
‘The whole realm of morality and religion belongs under this concept of imaginary causes. The “explanation” of disagreeable general feelings. They are produced by beings that are hostile to us (evil spirits: the most famous case – the misunderstanding of the hysterical as witches). They are produced by acts which cannot be approved (the feeling of “sin,” of “sinfulness,” is slipped under a physiological discomfort; one always finds reasons for being dissatisfied with oneself). They are produced as punishments, as payment for something we should not have done, for what we should not have been (impudently generalized by Schopenhauer into a principle in which morality appears as what it really is – as the very poisoner and slanderer of life: “Every great pain, whether physical or spiritual, declares what we deserve; for it could not come to us if we did not deserve it.” World as Will and Representation II, 666)…
The “explanation” of agreeable general feelings. They are produced by trust in God. They are produced by the consciousness of good deeds (the so-called “good conscience” – a physiological state which at times looks so much like good digestion that it is hard to tell them apart)…
Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at work. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when any being-such-and-such is traced back to will, to purposes, to acts of responsibility: the doctrine of the will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is, because one wanted to impute guilt. The entire old psychology, the psychology of will, was conditioned by the fact that its originators, the priests at the head of ancient communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish – or wanted to create this right for God. Men were considered “free” so that they might be judged and punished – so that they might become guilty: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the consciousness…
Today, as we have entered into the reverse movement and we immoralists are trying with all our strength to take the concept of guilt and the concept of punishment out of the world again, and to cleanse psychology, history, nature, and social institutions and sanctions of them, there is in our eyes no more radical opposition than that of the theologians, who continue with the concept of a “moral world-order” to infect the innocence of becoming by means of “punishment” and “guilt.” Christianity is a metaphysics of the hangman.’
Taken from:
F. Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’ in The Portable Nietzsche (ed). Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1968), pp. 498-500.