強制としての道徳 : 『善悪の彼岸』一八八番を中心に

Nietzsche is often called an a-moralist. According to him, it is said, there is no God, so that you may as well or even ought to do anything that you please. To what extent is this current image of Nietzsche valid? This essay tries to show another side of his moral consideration. In Beyond Good and Evil, the author makes fun of the "science of morals," which pretends to give a base to morality. The moral scientists seriously believe in the reason for each given human rule, for example, why should you not murder your fellow creature? Instead of such a rationalistic view, Nietzsche proposes the "natural history of morals," whose steady collection, comprehensive survey and deliberate classification of many kinds of morality enables us to discover the authentic problems of morals. As a historian of morals, Nietzsche finds and emphasizes the significance of the compulsory character in ethics. What is essential and admirable in each system of morality, is that it is a longstanding constraint. Under its irrational pressure human beings have always acquired something which has made their lives worth living, for instance, virtue, art, music, science and spirituality. Nietzsche demonstrates the cultural productivity of the liberal obedience to arbitrary laws by pointing to the fact that the poets are willing to submit themselves to the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm in order to attain to elegance, freedom and masterly certainty. The metrical constraint is no less a condition for freedom than moral compulsion. This kind of analogy between poetry and morality was also noticed by Kuki Shuzo, a Japanese poet-philosopher, who cited Valery\u27s phrase, "the largest freedom grows out of the gravest rigor.