163

Contra Rousseau70.  If it is true that our civilisation has something pitiable about it, you have the choice of concluding with Rousseau that 'this pitiable civilisation is to blame for our bad morality', or against Rousseau that 'our good morality is to blame for this pitiableness of our civilisation. Our weak, unmanly, social concepts of good and evil and their tremendous ascendancy over body and soul have finally weakened all bodies and souls and snapped the self-reliant, independent, unprejudiced men, the pillars of a strong civilisation: where one still encounters bad morality one beholds the last ruins of these pillars.' Thus paradox stands against paradox! The truth cannot possibly be on both sides: and is it on either of them? Test them and see.

70. Contra Rousseau: the second part of the disjunctive here (which Nietzsche espouses) is opposed to the thesis of Rousseau that "man is naturally good, and only by institutions is he made bad" (Discourse on Inequality).
Friedrich Nietzsche - Daybreak
Book III - Aphorism # 163

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