“ Our mollification of morals—this is my cry; this it you will is my innovation—is the outcome of our decline; conversely hardness and terribleness in morals may be the result of a surplus of life. When the latter state prevails, much is dared, much is challenged, and much is also squandered. ”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889). copy citation
| Author | Friedrich Nietzsche |
|---|---|
| Source | Twilight of the Idols |
| Topic | innovation hardness |
| Date | 1889 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici |
| Weblink | https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52263/52263-h/52263-h.htm |
Context
“This is then called "virtue": among those men who knew a different life—that is to say, a fuller, more prodigal, more superabundant sort of life, it might have been called by another name,—possibly "cowardice," or "vileness," or "old woman's morality." ... Our mollification of morals—this is my cry; this it you will is my innovation—is the outcome of our decline; conversely hardness and terribleness in morals may be the result of a surplus of life. When the latter state prevails, much is dared, much is challenged, and much is also squandered. That which formerly was simply the salt of life, would now be our poison. To be indifferent—even this is a form of strength— for that, likewise, we are too senile, too decrepit: our morality of fellow-feeling, against which I was the first to raise a finger of warning, that which might be called moral impressionism, is one symptom the more of the excessive physiological irritability which is peculiar to everything decadent.”
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