The Enemy of Morality

Well...let's face it....I am a die hard Nietzsche junkie.....so obviously he is once again quoted..... He made a very important statement in his 'The Gay Science (La Gaya Scienza)" about how important a little indiscipline in life is. It makes all the difference between the genius and mediocre. Remember in the 19th century, when Nietzsche was writing this, the word 'gay' did not yet have the homosexual connotation, it meant 'unconventional!!!'.

A couplet of the book says...

So here is a Nietzscheian erruption aginst the everyday social conformity - The revenge against the spirit and other ulterior motives of morality.

The revenge against the spirit and other ulterior motives of morality. " Morality "where do you suppose that it finds its most dangerous and insidious advocates? ... There is a human being who has turned out badly [ein missratener Mensch], who does not have enough spirit to be able to enjoy it but just enough education to realize this; he is bored, disgusted, and despises himself; having inherited some money, he is deprived even of the last comfort, "the blessings of work," self-forgetfulness in "daily labor"; such a person who is fundamentally ashamed of his existence "perhaps he also harbors a few little vices "and on the other hand cannot keep himself from becoming more and more spoiled and irritable by reading books to which he is not entitled or by associating with more spiritual company than he can digest: such a human being who has become poisoned through and through "for spirit becomes poison, education becomes poison, possessions become poison, solitude becomes poison for those who have turned out badly in this way "eventually ends up in a state of habitual revenge, will to revenge ... what do you suppose he finds necessary, absolutely necessary, to give himself in his own eyes the appearance of superiority over more spiritual people and to attain the pleasure of an accomplished revenge at least in his imagination? Always morality, you can bet on that, always big moral words, always the rub-a-dub of justice, wisdom, holiness, virtue, always the stoicism of gesture ( "how well stoicism conceals what one lacks!..), always the cloak of prudent silence, of affability, of mildness, and whatever may be the names of all the other idealistic cloaks in which incurable self-despisers, as well as the incurably vain, strut about. Do not misunderstand me: among such born enemies of the spirit there comes into being occasionally the rare piece of humanity that the common people revere, using such names as saint and sage; it is from among men of this sort that those monsters of morality come who make noise, who make history "St. Augustine is one of them. Fear of the spirit, revenge against the spirit "how often these propelling vices have become the roots of virtues! Even nothing less than virtues! " And, a confidential question, even the claim that they possessed wisdom, which has been made here and there on earth by philosophers, the maddest and most immodest of all claims "has it not always been to date, in India as well as in Greece, a screen above all? At times perhaps a screen chosen with pedagogical intent, which hallows so many lies; one has a tender regard for those still in the process of becoming, of growing, for disciples, who must often be defended against themselves by means of faith in a person (by means of an error) ... Much more often, however, it is a screen behind which the philosopher saves himself because he has become weary, old, cold, hard, as a premonition that the end is near, like the prudence animals have before they die "they go off by themselves, become still, choose solitude, hide in caves, become wise ... What? Wisdom as a screen behind which the philosopher hides from "spirit? "