On the Genealogy of Morals

I shall conclude with three questions, as you will see. ‘Is an ideal actually being erected here, or being demolished?’ This is what I may be asked … But have you ever really asked yourselves how dear a price has been paid for every ideal in the world? How ruthlessly must reality be falsely condemned? How many lies must be dignified? How badly must

All instincts that cannot be given external expression turn inwards – this is what I mean by the internalization of man, and with this we have the first appearance in man of what subsequently was called his ‘soul’. The whole ‘inner world’, at first so very minute, unfolded, acquiring dimension, depth, breadth and height, when man’s external outlet

It was that desire for self-torture in the savage who suppresses his cruelty because he was forced to contain himself (incarcerated as he was in ‘the state’, as part of his taming process), who invented bad conscience so as to hurt himself, after the more natural outlet for this desire to hurt had been blocked – in other words, this man of bad cons

Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers the punishment – the so-called ‘correction’ – or for those who witness its execution. – Punishment as the payment of a fee stipulated by the power which protects the miscreant from the excesses of revenge. – Punishment as a compromise with the natural occurrence of revenge, in so far as revenge

I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to me, a scheme itself based on a little material collected here and there: – Punishment as a means of rendering the criminal harmless and incapable of inflicting further injury. – Punishment as compensation for the injury sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including

As the power and the self-knowledge of a community increases, the penal code in turn becomes proportionately more lenient; conversely, if the community is weakened or feels threatened, then harsher penalties are enacted.

man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social constraints, was made genuinely predictable.

– ‘What? Do I hear right? They call it “the last judgement”,73 the advent of their kingdom, “the kingdom of God” – but in the meanwhile they live “in faith”, “in hope”, “in love”.’74 – Enough! Enough!

‘Beati in regno celesti’, says he, as gently as a lamb, ‘videbunt paenas damnatorum, ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat’.78