Summary: I'll try to argue why the immoralism in Nietzsche is the only way to be in an honest ethical thinking, and the only way to be consequent with the natural change of the character through the suffering. I'll compare the behave with morality and without morality: I'll compare the Christians with the Greeks (the Ancient aristocratic communities). I'll establish a distinction between ethics and moral. And establish why the pretension of the morality of being universal is impossible if one takes honestly the two concepts that are below it: empathy and, specially in the Christianity, the compassion. And I'll remark how the morality is a slab to the growth of the man. I'll illustrate it with two examples of literature.
Everyone comes into the world crying. We need the first cry to start the first breathing of our life. No one escapes that. It's impossible being in the world without the first bawl that our mother heard in her ears, is this suffer the one who builds our character. We're build through πάθος (pathos):
<< A philosopher who has traversed many kinds of health, and keeps traversing them, has passed through an equal number of philosophies >>1
When we can manage with πάθος, we can redirect it from the destruction to the construction, we are able to build a new ἦθος (ethos), a new character left from the pain:
<< […] from such abysses, from such severe sickness, also from the sickness of severe suspicion, one returns newborn, having shed one's skin, more ticklish and malicious, with a more delicate taste for joy, with a tender tongue for all good things, with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before >>2
Then we are ourselves because our personal management of our own πάθος. We return “newborn” -in a new character- from the profound abysses of the pain. But, what is exactly ἦθος ? In the Ancient Greece was the character of a community, the way of being of the community. And this “way of being” of the folks was built on the πάθος that those community suffered to be who it was. And this ἦθος of the κοινόν (folks, the common) was also the way of behavior in the new appearances of new possibilities of pain. The pain built a way of being and this was used to manage the new incoming pain. And also, this new pain would offer new possibilities to change the ἦθος. The possibility of the creation of a new statement of “ethos” was located in the space between κοινόν and ἴδιον (individual). In the case of the aristrocratic society the space the creation of values was taking place in the armosphere when the individual was had space in front on the common to create: in the war, the warrior and the hero and, in the peace, the bard. They were influenced by their own experiences, their own suffering, and through them they were able to create a new ἦθος in the ἴδιον that, at its time, influenced also the κοινόν. Is the topic of the aristocratic societies in the Ancient Greece: the hero and the bard as an example to all the κοινόν, as a παιδεια (paideia, education).
As I said, the creation and management of the character was possible in this space between the individual and the common folks and, also, one could establish his own character with the perseverance in the habits of the best: the aristocratic virtues. The war was a perfect possibility to consider their own character through the pathos that comes when the warrior is in front of the face of Θάνατος (Thanatos). In this reflect they could establish his own values grew in the battleground. The character was forged in the πάθος and in the perseverance of the aristocratic that they extract from the contact with pain, suffer and death. Their values were created in the changing battlefield of the Ancient times, they always had a opportunity to prove them and to reflect them in their own skin. The ἦθος was always improving himself through the battle, through πάθος. This dynamism inside the character, this plasticity, enabled the creation of new values -through the reflect of the ἦθος in the πάθος- in the figure of the hero: like the own values of Achilles. And this plasticity is also the paradigmatic feature of the bard: adapting the story to the audience and modeling the “real” story through his own experiences, recreating it, and that is: creating it. In the case of the heros like Achilles, they built their own values without thinking in the interests of the community was a real danger; this was seen as a threat to the common welfare of the whole polis, life was life in society: the man couldn't be without the interdependent relationship with their peers. That's why, at individual, at who that follows his own interest, at who that creates something new, the polis describes him as an idiot, an abuse of the powers of the ἴδιον3. The same plasticity that enabled the aristocratic society enabled at the same time the possibility of being a individual separate from the interests of the aristocratic community. As an example, Achilles could be considered like an idiot in a part of the Iliad, when he don't want to participate in the war.
This society had the protean power to create their own values through the action of these “individuals”, those that at the same time, if their creation was dangerous to the preservation of the community, were treated like idiots. In this society men weren't slaves of a string of behavior rules. The values were a product of the constant reflect of the “ethos” through the pain of the living dynamism, a product of the action, a product of the suffer. A “ethos” that is performed through the action and it will be only finished with the death. The action of Achilles was only an action headed in a whole life, the important here is the wholeness not the single thing. There wasn't completely and finished actions, an action was only an action, aimed to the creation of an art work: the life.
What about morality? There was morality in this societies? What is morality? The word comes from the latin “mores” that can be translated by custom or habit. Have this “mores” some relation with the ancient “ἦθος” ? In the first times they were like synonyms but, step by step, they were been separated until our days. The main expression of the separation of this two concepts is the Christianity. There are two important concepts here: intention and action. In the Ancient Greece the action was everything, there wasn't anything behind the action. An action was an action and no more.
<< […] there is no “being” behind doing, effecting, becoming; “the doer” is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything >> 4
The ethical value of an action was not that important in Greece like the ethical value of a complete life. An action wasn't bad or good in itself, the important was a good or a bad life. But, how can knew the ἴδιον if he had a bad or a good life? Simply: he couldn't knew it by itself. There was something that measure the goodness or the badness of a life: the fame, “cléos”, κλέος. And there was a matter of those who remembered the ἴδιον that died in their folk tales and in the common mind. The fame was the door to enter in the reign of the immortality. The destiny was the baton that managed the life of the Greeks, being oneself meant, being in your destiny. This fatality also made impossible the establishment of the responsibility, a concept that comes from the Semitic mentality.
It could happen that this fatalism could generate a feeling of irresponsibility towards life: do whatever I do the destiny is met, the man is not responsible for their actions, the destiny is predicted in all event.
In contrast, Judeo-Christianity is another story, God has given a charisma, a gift: the transition from non-existence to existence, the passage from the yoke of Egypt to the freedom of the wilderness issue, the passage from the prison of death to the freedom of the resurrection. God has granted freedom to his people: this implies a responsibility to care for and make good use of charisma, the man is responsible for the administration of his earthly existence.
However, the limits are not stringent. The Greek man was subject to fate, but he could confront him, the hero is one who resists the destination or delivered to him, assuming resigned the fatal consequences. There is some room for the freedom struggle, some space to creation, some space to responsibility -at least to create a great art work-. In the Judeo-Christian man the thing is a bit complicated, depending on the denomination or theological doctrine that the believer professes: usually the man has some freedom but the salvation, ultimately depends on the grace of God. And is in the little things where the man could be saved. In the Christian people, every action is an opportunity to be saved or to be condemned. He have the responsibility of his own salvation.
If the motivation behind the action of the Greek and the Christian is the same -immortality- there is a essential difference in the way of act: the Greek act through the active creation, the Christian act through the reaction. In all the Christian actions there are two layers: the action and the intention of the action. Is in this moment when “ἦθος” and “mores” will separate: the Christian reflect about the intention of his action and he'll considered it bad if it don't fit with the moral convictions that will bring him to the salvation. He established a difference between the reflect about the action and the rules that were been established by the cenobitic communities and will bring him -if he follow them- to the salvation. The difference between ethics and moral: the reflection of the action and the established rules of behavior.
In the Christian there aren't no πάθος that can't change his ἦθος. All the reflection about the actions are aimed to support his moral convictions. All the ethics are aimed to support the morals. There's no possibility, in the moral conviction, to the change of the character through the suffer; the Christian will be tied to his rules even if the suffer impulse him to overcome or to invalidate the rule. He will close his eyes to the evidence of the suffer, he will stay tied to his convictions and he will react to everything that can destroy his values, his passport to the salvation. Is in this moment when appears the figure of the ressentiment: regretting an action because its intention doesn't fit with the moral values. If, bridging the gap, we consider the Greek example as a “noble morality” and the Christian example as a “slave morality”, we can say with Nietzsche:
<< While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says “No” to what is “outside”, what is “different”, what is “not itself”; and this “No” is its creative deed. This inversion of the value-positing eye – this need to direct one's view outward instead of back to oneself – is of the essence of ressentiment: in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile external world; it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all – its action is fundamentally reaction.
The reverse is the case with the noble mode of valuation: it acts and grows spontaneously, it seeks its opposite only so as to affirm itself gratefully and triumphantly >>5
The Christians always oppose their moral convictions to the rest of the world, they find themselves with the moral convictions in one hand and pointing with the other all of the things that they aren't. In the front of a suffering moment that can change their characters, they look first at their moral convictions and then decide to please them but not at themselves. The decided to avoid the change of their characters, they look to another place when their ἦθος wants to change under the incoming πάθος. They act with a values drawn from a character that took place so far in the time, a character formed from a totally different suffering of theirs. The moral convictions are a cover against the incoming suffer that can change the character of the Christian and throw them to the perdition.
In the case of the Greeks they act affirming themselves and they are more plastic and, because this, more protean. The ressentiment in the Christians is also protean but becomes creative from the moral convictions, becomes creative from the established values and rules. They look at the world looking a pre-established “evil” and “good”. The Christians grows up more and more rules -through the ressentiment- burying themselves below a suffocating morality. The Greeks can become more plastic and can become artists, they can fight against the fate through the construction of a character swung by the suffering, looking at the world without a slab of morality, only with an ἦθος that can be chiseled by the πάθος. Letting modeling by the πάθος they can change their ἦθος -reflection the pain that they suffered through this ethos- and affirm themselves like a art work project. The great life created in the suffering mud of Dionysus to grow up -in the rotten soil- an Apollonian beauty.
The action of one is focused in the predominance of the morality above the ethics and the other is focused in the total predominance of the reflection of the suffer, of the acts that create a new character. One is guided by the moral values and the other is guided by the ethical reflection. But, why Nietzsche deny the morality? What is terribly wrong with the morality?
<< Those moralists who command man first of all and above all to gain control on himself thus afflict him with a peculiar disease; namely, a constant irritability in the face of all natural stirrings and inclinations -as it were, a kind of itching. Whatever may henceforth push, pull, attract, or impel such an irritable person from inside or outside, it will always seem to him as if his self-control were endangered. No longer may he entrust himself to any instinct or free wing-beat: he stands in a fixed position with a gesture that wards off, armed against himself, with sharp and mistrustful eyes -the eternal guardian of his castle, since he has turned himself into a castle. Of course, he can achieve greatness this way. But he has certainly become insufferable for others, difficult for himself, and impoverished and cut off from the most beautiful fortuities of his soul. Also from all further instruction. For one must be able to lose oneself occasionally if one wants to learn something from things different from oneself >>6
Seems that the moralist is guided by the moral rather than being leading by himself. But, before proceeding, I should introduce another important concept basic for the correct function of the morality: the concept of compassion and his relation with pity.
“Compassion” comes from the latin cumpassio that is a translation from the greek συμπάθεια (sympátheia, sympathetic) that is constructed from “συν” (syn, together) and “πάθος”(páthos, suffering). It means something like “suffering together” or “sharing suffering”. The compassion is deeper than the empathy. The first will understand and recover the suffer of the other while the empathy will only understand the suffer. The compassion demands a deeply understanding and feeling of the suffer of the other.
Morality tends to have an universal ambition, a hat that should fit in every men head: whether this is big, small, bold, hairy, brilliant or numb. The empathy is a central concept in this ambition of universalism of the moral: understanding the pain of the others to understand also the impulse behind their actions and behaviors. And the compassion, the sympathy, is proper from the Christianity morality: not only understand the suffering of the fellow but recover his pain. At this point, the pity appears when the Christian wants to help the fellow that is suffering. The pity is the impulse to help when one is only able to feel empathy but not compassion, when can understand -in a way- the pain of the fellow but can't suffer with him because he don't lived the same pain. The pity could be understood like the impulse to try to feel compassion without having lived the same feeling7. The pity is the look to who suffers conditioned by the moral burden, an impulse to "ought to” feel -to share- the suffering with him. Is the paradigmatic situation of the Christ in the cross: all the Christians feel pity for him but they can't feel compassion; they try to feel compassion but it's impossible: they're not living in the same context, they don't have the same wounds, they don't experienced the same pain. Nietzsche saw in the pity something hypocritical, the only way to help honestly someone is through compassion:
<< Our personal and profoundest suffering is incomprehensible and inaccessible to almost everyone; here we remain hidden from our neighbor, even if we eat from one pot. But whenever people notice that we suffer, they interpret our suffering superficially. It is the very essence of the emotion of pity that strips away from the suffering of others whatever is distinctively personal >>8
The universal morality, the universal impulse to feel empathy -that is one of the pillars of the categorical imperative of Kant- and the universal impulse to -try to- feel compassion in Christianity is, for Nietzsche, impossible. The negation of the possibility of a universal morality is not related to a moral relativism, at least is not the main critic that Nietzsche throw to the morality. I can saw a basic aspect of the critical to morality of Nietzsche: the critical like a “system”.
The morality have a pretension to truthfulness, it wants to establish an -in the way of the will to truth- evergreen values. To create a system of values you need something stable that you wouldn't find in human behavior, so you need to find it in the value itself. The moral value raises like something that will have the pretension to be eternal and immovable. It don't take care about the changes of the character of the human being that could built another needs different from that morality values represents. In the morality there is a first protean moment, a moment of ethical reflection that creates the values that constituting the moral but, later, the men become slave of this moral values. The collection of moral values, as built like universal and evergreen values, wants to stay forever like a guide in the behavior of the men. There is no space for a honest ethical reflection, all the thoughts will lead like a support to the established values, closing more and more the moral jail of the men. Moral jail? Of course. The morality is a jail as long as it can't permit the growth of the man in corresponding to the own reflection about his own acts that construct a new ἦθος, a new character that is honest with the dynamism of the change. The morality is an anchor that ties the poet, the genius, the master man in the reign of the κοινόν, to overcome themselves they need to overcome the morality that tie them in an alien state: the same ἦθος of the κοινόν that built the moral values to which they are tied now. To create an art work, to evolve, to be joyful, to become a master of his own universe man needs to overcome this morality state and become like the Ancient aristocratic society of Greece that created their own values to established their own world according with the character forged in the suffer, in the experience, in the passion. Then, the morality like a truthful system don't work because all system of values is son of its time and therefore isn't evergreen, it's caducous. Is tied to a certain moment, a certain context. And, even more, is son of a certain pain, a certain suffer. Also the empathic that is below all the morality doesn't work in an universally way. You are only able to understand honestly the suffering that you felt in your skin. You're only able to feel empathy and compassion with only the people that felt, in a way, something similar like you: your friends, your comrades in the war, your family. Feel compassion or empathy for the humanity -something below the morality- is a superb mistake and even and something hypocritical for Nietzsche. In fact, the compassion for the humanity can only become in the hypocritical pity. To be honest with the compassion -and not become into pity- one can only feel it with the people that felt the same like him; that is not, for sure, all the humanity.
Then, like a system, the morality -understood in his will to universalism, in his will to truth- doesn't work.
One can say that the position of Nietzsche is the immoralism. Is a word that, in the first moment, scares. But, time by time, one realizes that this is the honest form to reach an consequent ethical reflection.
I'll put two literary examples to illustrate the honestly ethics of immoralism in Nietzsche: one is the Iliad and the other is a brilliant Icelandic novel called Grámosinn glóir from Thor Vilhjálmsson.
Sometimes the literature can show very well all the concepts that the philosophers try to say to us. In the Iliad I can see an example of the only way to feel an honest sentiment of compassion that Nietzsche uses thinks that is the only way to help, without hypocrisy, the other. Is simple: sharing the same suffering, the same pathos. I choose the moment when Priam is in the tent of Achilles. The hero from the Greeks loose his best friend, Patroclus, by the hands of Hector, the son of Priam. Achilles, dam of anger, killed Hector and don't permit the funeral of him. The funeral was a very important moment in the Ancient times: permits a good travel in Styx and the honor to the deceased. Achilles see the face of Priam and see the same feeling that he felt with Patroclus; he becomes aware that they're in the hands of the fate and, even Patroclus, was helped to be killed by the Gods. He can see in the eyes of Priam the same look that he had in front of the corpse of his friend. He shares the same suffering that is suffering now Priam, victim of the destiny, has he -a hero- also is. He decided to stop the war for a few days to let celebrate the Hector's funeral and allowed the heading of Priam with Hector's corpse from the enemy camp.
Achilles is, at least for me, a great example of master man. He reflects about his suffering and, through the reflection, changes his character and his values deciding to step aside from the war. He his not slave of the common folk values but he his a son of his own world, he don't take care about the interests of a whole community. He is a bad companion for the greek army but a great ethical thinker: he follow his own rules that he create with the reflection through his own and personal suffering. For me there's only a moment when Hector is a best example of master man than him: when Achilles reacts at the death of his best friend and returns to war to revenge it. Is in this moment when Hector is a great master man, saying Yes to life, to the great life, even when his wife advertises him of his nearly death and the Gods also try to save him from the hands of Achilles. But, there's always the backside, we can see Hector like a great follower of the values of Troy, a great State-man. Anyway, the important here is that during the war the character of Achilles changes through the suffering and, in the final, he change the anger for compassion; a real compassion, a real sharing the suffer that permits giving some honest help to restore the pain, even between two enemies. A honestly compassion that brakes the walls of disagree and enmity.
In the novel of Vilhjálmsson we find a story of a brother and a sister that had sexual relations and they will be judged by Ásmundur, the alter ego of Einar Benediktsson. There's a big difference between the girl and the boy. She's completely sure about her own values, she create her own world and is the master of her rules. He follow the game of her but he's not so brave to brake the walls of the little farm values and embrace the values of his sister, he's tied by the Christian morality of the farm. And there's a real overwhelming scene, when the judge is on the front of the girl and can see how she hasn't regret anything. A real difference between his brother that is so sorry and resentful. The judge can see in the eyes of her the protean power of the master man but he can't really understand the values of her; because the pain, the experiences, the pathos, that changes the character of her far from the archetypal character of the Christian is so far from the pathos of Ásmundur in Copenhagen. He can try to understand the behave of she but I'll be impossible, he never lived all his life in a little farmer community in the North of Iceland, he'll never growth the same character because his pathos is totally different. There's a moment when the judge become aware of this distance between both sufferings, both characters, and compares the acussed with Medea. I'll try to translate the scene from the Spanish:
<< The judge did everything possible to confine it within its function. I had never seen this woman. But it was as if he had ever seen, anywhere. Where? Probably nowhere. But there was something he was known in that pride of deathly pallor. Something I knew, I knew, I thought somehow understand, never before had seen.
Was is it in a dream, had been in poetry? It was something he had tried to compose and he might never had succeeded in concluding, to the moment you see her standing before him and knows that his power can not reach it.
Jason thinks: Medea and Jason is before taking revenge. He returned the blow. Revenge for which there can never be compensation, has killed their own children. Why he thinks of Medea at the lightning when his eyes met hers, and he realizes that his power can never reach this woman? >>9
How judge an action? An action that you'll never understand -you'll never feel real empathy with it- because you've never been there, you've never walk through the same suffers. How say that one is guilty? If you will walk through the same suffering, through the same experience, you'll never say that your fellow is guilty because you'll be empathic with him. Then, the empathy that is under the morality is hypocritical because if it was real you'll never blame the other because you completely understand the pathos behind the action. Ásmundur will never be at the higher position of the girl, her values will always stay away from the hands of the judge. And, even if he knows this pathos of distance, he needs to judge her under the morality, under the eyes of the others, under the Christianity.
The immoralism of the girl hide a ethical perfectionism. The ressentiment doesn't works in the nietzschean immoralism and in the ethical thinking of the accused. The ressentiment is painful when one makes an action compromise with a system of values, when one makes an action and looks at it retrospectively regret it basing is ashamed in the rules of behavior that guide his steps. The immoralism is a constant ethical reflection that don't want to be tied to a state, because knows that one of the principal aspects of the life is the changing of the character through the constant changing of the sufferings. The immoralism will never regret an action because all the actions in the immoralism departs from a character that create the values in the moment of the suffering, that create the values related to a certain context, to a certain moment and live with it in this moments, in this contexts. In another context the immoralism will create another values to behave through another ethical reflection, according to and honest empathy and compassion. To feelings that, to become in an honest way, they need to stay tied to a certain context, to a certain suffering. The immoralism will never regret the original sin, this bad feeling for something alien to the own suffering that occurs so far from the own suffering.
The girl -like the Greeks that I was talking in above- will never regret an action. She'll never been ashamed from something that she made because all her actions came from his own and contextualized thoughts.
On the other hand, the boy -like the Christians that I was talking above- and his hypocritical and decontextualized system of values -tied to one suffer that is not his suffer, tied to a character that is not his character- will always regret their actions because they were always acting with the external system of values on his mind. A system of values that never takes care about the certain contexts, the certain suffering, the certain pathos. Trying to feel an impossible compassion for some suffers that they never had, trying to behave in a rules that they never feel in their character. Only to please a God, a systems of values, that promises the salvation. Following the moral values even with the ghost of the saving grace that can eliminate the desire of responsibility in the Christian -putting all the responsibility of the salvation in God- they will follow this alien -to their character- moral rules.
Then, the immoralism is the only thing that works honestly, it achieved to discard the yoke of the moral that conditions the ethical reflection that, to be in an honest way, needs to be tied to a certain suffering and context, not to an oppressive system of values that always check the ethical reflection to condition it to herself. The immoralism permits an establishment of values through the own context, a values without pretension of evergreen, a creation of values that aren't tied to another pre-established system of behave, a values that don't have fear to be destroyed if the context and the moment requires it.
The master and the lower man. The girl and the boy. The artist, the hero, the bard, the warrior in the top and the common folk, the coward and the slave below them. And Ásmundur in the middle: looking at the highest point with open-mouthed and looking below his feet with a feeling of pity. He is aware. He knows that he can't judge something that he never lived, but he is in the middle of the mountain. He is the tool of the below-man to construct the bridge to a false higher mountains to them. Another time. The girl and the boy. The ethical honesty and the moral hypocrisy.
1“The Gay Science”, Preface for the second edition, §3; Nietzsche
2“The Gay Science”, Preface for the second edition, §4; Nietzsche
3In fact idiot comes from ἴδιον, individual.
4“Genealogy of Morals”, First Essay, §13; Nietzsche
5“Genealogy of morals”, First Essay, §10; Nietzsche
6“The Gay Science”, Book four, §305; Nietzsche
7This “trying to feel” reminds me the “bad faith” of Sartre: wanting to feel the things that you can feel only to please the other.
8“The Gay Science”, Book four, §338; Nietzsche
9“Grámosinn glóir”, Thor Vilhjálmsson. I'll put the translation of the title of the chapter where this scene appears is called something like: Reading resolution. I'm so sorry I didn't find an english translation.
