Infraestructura, riego y drenaje en Ecuador

Yet have we then with this answered the questions with which we began this section? That is, have we now explained how slave values can be seen as a contingent ‘secondary’ perversion of bad conscience’s initial founding perversity? And, related to this, have we shown why this means such a phenomenon is then deserving of critique? In a sense we have. For looking back we began by saying that man’s internalisation allowed, through the power of negating the given, the possibility in him of creating values. And further we saw that noble value creation represented the authentic mode of that possibility, and hence the continuation

of the active force. That is, noble values continued the ‘formative and rapacious’139 force

which imposed itself by overcoming resistance, and which was present in bad conscience.140

Yet we then had to ask another question. We had to ask how it was that the slave revolt was as such a ‘perversion’ of this active mode of value creation derived from bad conscience. And in turn, we attempted to answer this by first asking why value creation was not ‘a sort of

general privilege of mankind.’141

In other words, to discover how the slaves perverted active values we had to explain why it was that they were unable to authentically create values themselves.

Continuing therefore we did this by contrasting the nature of the nobles and the slaves. We said then that the nobles were able originally to create value because they were willing to engage in risk and struggle to overcome resistance. Put differently, their ‘scorn for

138 GM: I: SS13 139 GM: II: SS18 140

This is in contrast to the view of Deleuze, for whom bad conscience is re-active. Nonetheless Kaufmann, p252-255, and Schacht, p218-224, are closer to our position regarding bad conscience in so far as both suggest why ‘repression’ and bad conscience may be positive.

141

safety, body, life, comfort’142

allows them to impose their will on the world, and it is this then which, genuinely affirming their being, provides the matter to create ideals. In contrast, though, it is the slaves’ concern for self-interest and survival which means they cannot affirm their mode of life in this way. That is, what Metzger calls ‘their weakness with regards to

themselves’143

means they avoid the struggle necessary to forge a real identity, and hence cannot carve a value into existence. Yet to return, this contrast then allowed us to understand the origins of the slave’s perversion of noble values. For, whilst the slave cannot create values originally himself, he still might satisfy his need for meaning and affirmation by somehow utilising the noble’s active values. And the initial means by which this is achieved

is through ressentiment. That is, whereby the slave derivatively gains an identity in relation to

the noble as his victim. In turn though we also said such a solution to the slave’s dilemma here was only partial. Rather in order for the slave fully to affirm himself ressentiment had to

‘turn creative’, ‘and give birth to values.’144145

And this was only achieved when the

ressentiment’s hatred had intensified to such a pitch that from the hated enemy was born an idea of ‘evil’. That is to say, that the slave could affirm himself when he invented the notion

that the noble was in fact one who had chosen to be active and dominating. For in suggesting

that anyone could choose to be evil in this way, the slave conversely set up his passivity as a

choice not to be evil. In short, he could set up his own being, defined by the absence of

accomplishment, as a positive achievement, the achievement of not being immoral, and hence

of being moral, ‘good’.

Consequently, with this we can see how the slave’s dilemma regarding values and affirmation is solved. Furthermore we can now also see how this represents a subsequent perversion of something, noble value, that directly continues from the primary perversity of

bad conscience. For the slave is only able to establish his value, himself as good, by utilising

the activity of the nobles and turning it against itself. In brief, the slave can only affirm himself through a derivative and parasitical gesture which denies the very prior creation upon which he relies. And, continuing, we can also with this now grasp why slave morality is ‘the great danger to mankind.’146 This is because, being a perversion of an original active force, it 142 GM: I: SS11 143 Metzger, p137 144 GM: I: SS10 145

Note the contrast here with other commentators, principally Ridley, who argue that the ‘turning creative’ of ressentiment means ‘internalisation’, and hence that it is the internalisation of ressentiment that allows the slaves to create values, p26. That is, on this view the slaves are authentically able to create values, via ressentiment and the ‘cleverness’ it gives rise to.

146

denies and undermines the very thing which we are, and the very thing which is necessary to

our higher development. That is, like Zarathustra’s Last Man this revolt leaches the very soil

from which it itself grew, and ensures that ‘no longer will a high tree be able to grow from it.’147148

However, if we have thereby addressed the essential question of this section, where does this leave us overall? In other words, if we have shown that bad conscience is a

constituting perversion and the slave revolt is a contingent and ‘secondary’ perversion of this,

where does this leave our thesis? Put differently, where does it leave our discussion of man as

a perverse relation to something other than himself and the idea of a non-humanist existentialism?

The answer can be found if we look back to the beginning of our discussion. For there

we said that the concrete meaning of man ‘as a perverse relation’ was for Nietzsche man as

becoming. That is, we argued that by understanding man as genesis we can see him as a

perversion of natural forces, and hence not as humanism’s independent subject-entity. And further, we set out to do this by looking at man’s phylogenesis, how he came to be as a species. Yet we also argued that such a process had typically been understood in a humanist sense. In short, man’s species past had been viewed as the settled ‘property’ of a substantial

being; something he ‘has’ but not something fundamentally that he is. Consequently we said

that to develop our sense of man as perverse we had to overcome this perspective. And we

did so, as we have seen, by distinguishing primary and secondary perversions in his

genealogy. In other words, we did so by separating the necessary and constituting perversion of bad conscience from the slave revolt as a contingent, subsequent perversion of this. And thus, to answer our question, we can now see how with this we have been able to contribute to our thesis. For in showing how it was thus possible to meaningfully critique an aspect of

man’s species past we can also show how that past is still ‘alive’ and ‘at stake’ within us.149

That is, with our past ‘open’ and ‘alive’, with can recover a sense of ourselves as not merely

having a genesis but of being this genesis. And thus in this way, with man as a process of

continual becoming, we can develop the concrete meaning of man as a perverse relation to

147

TSZ: Prologue:SS5 148

Likewise Poellner focuses on what is objectionable about morality by looking at what is problematic about ressentiment. Further, also like our account, he ties this to a certain form of self-deception. Yet, rather than perverse parasitism being at the heart of this it is held to be ‘Phenomenal disvalue’, p140. That is, a state which if one were fully aware of it, one would not desire to be in. And this, according to Poellner, is something that applies to ressentiment to the extent that, seen properly, it has ‘rendered itself incapable of recognizing value.’ [p141].

149

This is in contrast to Foucault. For, he argues, symptomatically of post-modern, anti-existential readings of Nietzsche, that the ‘duty of Genealogy is not to demonstrate that the past actively exists in the present.’ M. Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’ in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice ed. by D.F. Bouchard [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977], p146

alterity. In short, with this idea that he is ‘an imperfect tense that can never become a perfect

one’150

, we give form to an existentialism without a substantial subject. That is, we give form to a sense of man without humanism.

150

F. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations trans. by R.J. Hollingdale [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997]: II: SS1, p61