146

Out beyond our neighbour too.  What? Is the nature of the truly moral to lie in our keeping in view the most immediate and most direct consequences to others of our actions and deciding in accordance with these consequences? But this, though it may be a morality, is a narrow and petty bourgeois one: a higher and freer viewpoint, it seems to me, is to look beyond these immediate consequences to others and under certain circumstances to pursue more distant goals even at the cost of the suffering of others  for example, to pursue knowledge even though one realises that our free-spiritedness will at first and as an immediate consequence plunge others into doubt, grief and even worse things. May we not at least treat our neighbour as we treat ourselves? And if with regard to ourselves we take no such narrow and petty bourgeois thought for the immediate consequences and the suffering they may cause, why do we have to take such thought in regard to our neighbour? Supposing we acted in the sense of self-sacrifice, what would forbid us to sacrifice our neighbour as well?  just as the state and as princes have done hitherto, when they sacrificed one citizen to another 'for the sake of the general interest', as they put it. We too, however, have general, and perhaps more general interests: why may a few individuals of the present generation not be sacrificed to coming generations? their grief, their distress, their despair, their blunders and fears not be deemed necessary, because a new ploughshare is to break up the ground and make it fruitful for all?  Finally: we at the same time communicate to our neighbour the point of view from which he can feel himself to be a sacrifice, we persuade him to the task for which we employ him. Are we then without pity? But if we also want to transcend our own pity and thus achieve victory over ourselves, is this not a higher and freer viewpoint and posture than that in which one feels secure when one has discovered whether an action benefits or harms our neighbour? We, on the other hand, would, through sacrifice  in which we and our neighhour are both included  Strengthen and raise higher the general feeling of human power, even though we might not attain to more. But even this would be a positive enhancement of happiness.  Finally, if even this    but now not a word more! A glance is enough; you have understood me.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Daybreak
Book II - Aphorism # 146

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