Philosophy in the modern world a new history of western philosophy, volume 4 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) (1) 254

ETHICS

consciousness of sinfulness. If he is to escape from this, he must rise from
the ethical sphere to this religious sphere: he must make ‘the leap of faith’.5

Nietzsche and the Transvaluation of Values
Nietzsche agreed with Kierkegaard that a call to the Christian life was
something that could not be justified by reason. But whereas Kierkegaard
concluded, ‘So much the worse for mere reason’, Nietzsche concluded, ‘So
much the worse for the call of Christianity’. Not that Nietzsche spent
much time in demonstrating that Christianity was irrational: his main
complaint against it was rather that it was base and degrading. In works like
The Genealogy of Morals he seeks not so much to refute the claims of Christian
morality as to trace its ignoble pedigree.
History, Nietzsche says, exhibits two different kinds of morality. In the
earliest times, strong, privileged aristocrats, feeling themselves to belong to
a higher order than their fellows, described their own qualities—noble
birth, bravery, candour, blondness, and the like—as ‘good’. They regarded
the characteristics of the plebeians—vulgarity, cowardice, untruthfulness,
and swarthiness—as ‘bad’. That is master-morality. The poor and weak,
resenting the power and riches of the aristocrats, turned this system on its
head. They set up their own contrasting system of values, a morality for
the herd that puts a premium on traits such as humility, sympathy, and
benevolence, which benefit the underdog. They saw the aristocratic type of
person not just as bad (schlecht) but as positively evil (boăse). The erection of
this new system Nietzsche called ‘a transvaluation of values’, and he
blamed it on the Jews.
It was the Jews who, reversing the aristocratic equation (good ¼ noble ¼ beautiful
¼ happy ¼ loved by the gods), dared with a frightening consistency to suggest the
contrary equation, and to hold on to it with the teeth of the most profound
hatred (the hatred of the powerless). It is they who have declared ‘the wretched

alone are the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly are alone good; the suffering, the
needy, the sick, the hideous, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who
are blessed, for them alone is salvation. You, on the other hand, you noblemen,
you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the cruel, the covetous, the
5 Kierkegaard’s teaching on faith and religion is discussed in Ch. 12 below.

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