“ A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. ”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1895). copy citation
| Author | Friedrich Nietzsche |
|---|---|
| Source | The Antichrist |
| Topic | duty nation |
| Date | 1895 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Henry Louis Mencken |
| Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Antichrist |
Context
“goodness grounded upon impersonality or a notion of universal validity—these are all chimeras, and in them one finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of Königsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every “impersonal” duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.—To think that no one has thought of Kant’s categorical imperative as dangerous to life!...”
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