The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II

by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

To what extent psychologists have been corrupted by the moral idiosyncrasy!—Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage to advance the theory of the non-free will (that is to say, the theory that denies morality);—not one had the courage to identify the typical feature of happiness, of every kind of happiness **("pleasure"), with the will to power: for the pleasure of power was considered immoral;—not one had the courage to regard virtue as a result of immorality (as a result of a will to power) in the service of a species (or of a race, or of a polis); for the will to power was considered immoral.

In the whole of moral evolution, there is no sign of truth: all the conceptual elements which come into play are fictions; all the psychological tenets are false; all the forms of logic employed in this department of prevarication are sophisms. The chief feature of all moral philosophers is their total lack of intellectual cleanliness and self-control: they regard "fine feelings" as arguments: their heaving breasts seem to them the bellows of godliness.... Moral philosophy is the most suspicious period in the history of the human intellect.

The first great example: in the name of morality and under its patronage, a great wrong was committed, which as a matter of fact was in every respect an act of decadence. Sufficient stress cannot be laid upon this fact, that the great Greek philosophers not only represented the decadence of every kind of Greek ability, but also made it contagious.... This "virtue" made wholly abstract was the highest form of seduction; to make oneself abstract means to turn one's back on the world.

The moment is a very remarkable one: the Sophists are within sight of the first criticism of morality, the first knowledge of morality:—they classify the majority of moral valuations (in view of their dependence upon local conditions) together;—they lead one to understand that every form of morality is capable of being upheld dialectically: that is to say, they guessed that all the fundamental principles of a morality must be sophistical—a proposition which was afterwards proved in the grandest possible style by the ancient philosophers from Plato onwards (up to Kant);—they postulate the primary truth that there is no such thing as a "moral per se," a "good per se," and that it is madness to talk of "truth" in this respect.

Wherever was intellectual uprightness to be found in those days?

The Greek culture of the Sophists had grown out of all the Greek instincts; it belongs to the culture of the age of Pericles as necessarily as Plato does not: it has its predecessors in Heraclitus, Democritus, and in the scientific types of the old philosophy; it finds expression in the elevated culture of Thucydides, for instance. And—it has ultimately shown itself to be right: every step in the science of epistemology and morality has confirmed the attitude of the Sophists.... Our modern attitude of mind is, to a great extent, Heraclitean, Democritean, and Protagorean ... to say that it is Protagorean is even sufficient: because Protagoras was in himself a synthesis of the two men Heraclitus and Democritus.

(Plato: a great Cagliostro,—let us think of how Epicurus judged him; how Timon, Pyrrho's friend, judged him——Is Plato's integrity by any chance beyond question?... But we at least know what he wished to have taught as absolute truth—namely, things which were to him not even relative truths: the separate and immortal life of "souls.")

429.

The Sophists are nothing more, nor less than realists: they elevate all the values and practices which are common property to the rank of values—they have the courage, peculiar to all strong intellects, which consists in knowing their immorality....

Is it to be supposed that these small Greek independent republics, so filled with rage and envy that they would fain have devoured each other, were led by principles of humanity and honesty? Is Thucydides by any chance reproached with the words he puts into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when they were treating with the Melii anent the question of destruction or submission? Only the most perfect Tartuffes could have been able to speak of virtue in the midst of that dreadful strain—or if not Tartuffes, at least detached philosophers, anchorites, exiles, and fleers from reality.... All of them, people who denied things in order to be able to exist.