Truthful Immorality, in Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, IV, 3

by Corry Shores
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Truthful Immorality

Friedrich Nietzsche

Ecce Homo:

How One Becomes What One Is

IV: "Why I am a Destiny"

3

Nietzsche considers himself the first immoralist. But Zarathustra was the first moralist. For, he rendered morality into metaphysics by making it a force.

Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things,—the transposition of morality into the metaphysical, as a force [Kraft], cause, and end in itself, is his work.

Because the forces of good and evil are always fighting, there is no "moral world order." But there is a higher virtue above moral good. That is truth. Knowing that the moral metaphysical order is a competition of forces elevates one to the status of truthful immoralist.

Even though Zarathustra discovered and ontologized morality, he also saw it was an error. In fact, all of history has come to prove that there is no moral order in the world. So instead, being truthful is the highest virtue, even if that means being above good and evil by embracing the power that struggles between them. This is what Zarathustra means to Nietzsche.

From the Nietzsche Channel Kaufmann translation:

Ecce Homo
How one becomes what one is

Why I Am a Destiny

3.

I have not been asked, as I should have been asked, what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things,—the transposition of morality into the metaphysical, as a force [Kraft], cause, and end in itself, is his work. But this question itself is at bottom its own answer. Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only has he more experience in this matter, for a longer time, than any other thinker—after all, the whole of history is the refutation by experiment of the principle of the so-called "moral world order"—: what is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine and his alone posits truthfulness as the highest virtue—this means the opposite of the cowardice of "idealists" who flee from reality, Zarathustra has more intestinal fortitude than all other thinkers taken together. To speak the truth and to shoot well with arrows, that is Persian virtue.— Am I understood? ... The self-overcoming of morality out of truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. Transl. Walter Kaufmann.

Online selections at:

http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/eh.htm

Image obtained gratefully from:

https://worldhistoryatyhs.wikispaces.com/file/view/Rose_Zoroaster.jpg