"A virtue must be _our own_ invention, _our_ most necessary self-expression
and self-defense: any other kind of virtue is merely a danger. Whatever is
not a condition of our life _harms_ it...'Virtue,' 'duty,' the 'good in
itself,' the good which is impersonal and universally valid--chimeras and
expressions of decline, of the final exhaustion of life, of the Chinese
phase of K=F6nigsberg. The fundamental laws of self-preservation and growth
demand the opposite--that everyone invent _his own_ virtue, _his own_
categorical imperative. A people perishes when it confuses _its_ duty with
duty in general. Nothing ruins us more profoundly, more intimately, than
every 'impersonal' duty, every sacrifice to the Moloch of abstraction. How
could one fail to see how Kant's categorical imperative endangered life
itself!...An action demanded by the instinct of life is proved to be _right_
by the pleasure that accompanies it; yet this nihilist with his Christian
dogmatic entrails considered pleasure an _objection_. What could destroy us
more quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner
necessity, without any deeply personal choice, without _pleasure_--as an
automaton of 'duty'? This is the recipe for decadence, even for idiocy. Kant
became an idiot."
If the ER is a form of categorical imperative, as was suggested in the
earlier thread, then it is a highly personal imperative, and not in any
sense one that can be abstracted out in the form of a general ideal. Rather,
one's imperative is simply one's virtue, following Nietzche's thought here,
it seems to me, and one's virtue is one's own highest good. Thus, one
person's good may be another's evil, etc.
Any thoughts about Nietzsche's concept of "virtue" here? How is "virtue"
here to be determined, proved out, categorized, if you will? How can we know
if _our_ virtue is a virtue, and not a vice? Or, thinking contrapuntally, is
it exactly our vices that are our true virtues? Vices, in that they are the
signs and symbols of "action demanded by the instinct of life," not to
forget that vices generally are considered "vices" _because_ they are
pleasurable. Virtues, on the other hand, are always signs of our being
vicious--to ourselves.
Best,
Steve C.
--- from list nietzsche@jefferson.village.virginia.edu ---