Unconditional Duties

Friedrich Nietzsche * Track #5 On The Gay Science

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Album The Gay Science

ALBUM

Friedrich Nietzsche

1882

Unconditional Duties by Friedrich Nietzsche

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Friedrich Nietzsche

Unconditional Duties Annotated

All men who feel that they need the strongest words and intonations, the most eloquent gestures and attitudes, in order to operate at all - revolutionary politicians, socialists, preachers of repentance with or without Christianity, with all of whom there must be no mere half-success. All these speak of "duties," and indeed, always of duties which have the character of being unconditional - without which they would have no right to their excessive pathos: that they know well enough! They grasp, therefore, at philosophies of morality which preach some kind of categorical imperative, or they assimilate a good lump of religion, as, for example, Mazzini did. Because they want to be trusted unconditionally, it is first of all necessary for them to trust themselves unconditionally, on the basis of some ultimate, undebatable command, sublime in itself, as the ministers and instruments of which, they would like to announce themselves. Here we have the most natural, and for the most part, very influential opponents of moral enlightenment and scepticism: but they are rare. On the other hand, there is always a very numerous class of those opponents wherever self-interest requires subjection, while repute and honour seem to forbid it. He who feels himself dishonoured at the thought of being the instrument of a prince, or of a party and sect, or even of wealth (for example, as the descendant of a proud, ancient family), but wishes nevertheless to be this instrument, or must be so before himself and before the public, such a person has need of pompous principles which can at all times be appealed to: principles of an unconditional ought, to which a person can subject himself without shame, and can show himself subjected. The more refined servility holds fast to the categorical imperative, and is the mortal enemy of those who want to take away the unconditional character of duty: propriety demands this from them, and not only propriety.

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