My demand upon the
philosopher is known, that he take his
stand
beyond good and evil and leave
the illusion of moral judgment
beneath himself. This demand follows from an
insight which I was the first to formulate: that
there are altogether no moral facts.
Moral judgments agree with
religious ones in believing in realities which are no
realities.
Morality is merely an interpretation of certain
phenomena - more precisely, a misinterpretation.
Moral judgments,
like religious ones, belong to a stage of
ignorance at which the very concept of the real and
the distinction between what is real and imaginary, are still
lacking; thus "truth," at this stage, designates all sorts
of things which we today call "imaginings."
Moral judgments
are therefore never to be taken
literally so understood,
they always contain mere absurdity.
Semiotically, however,
they remain
invaluable: they reveal, at least for those who
know, the most valuable realities of cultures and
inwardnesses which did not know enough to "understand"
themselves.
Morality is mere
sign language, mere
symptomatology: one must know what it is all about to be
able to profit from it.
from The Twilight of the Idols (1888) by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by H.L. Mencken, who took this gibberish seriously.
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