This article is mainly an oppositional
response to the second half of Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human, in
which he concludes that “Everything is
innocence: and knowledge is the way to insight into this innocence.”
[Nietzsche, 274-275] I plan on proving
that humanity is inclined to egotistical & malicious behavior and at the
same time refute humanity’s innocence from such a behavior. Humanity is far from innocent, and it is knowledge and insight that is the key to
its inherent evil: for is it not knowledge and purposeful premeditation that
proves innocence or guilt in our modern day court of law? When one’s need or desperation is raised to a
certain point, the value of human life & decency is then trampled upon by the
pursuit of one’s own needs and desires.
Justice is a system inherent to the stability and survival of society,
not the individual person, thus not inherent in him.
Self-awareness is the crux of this
ignorance-innocence argument. Nietzsche
pleads ignorance, and consequently innocence for the entire realm of human actions and
behaviors, but I however see awareness and forethought, and thus evil inherent (or at the very least a conscious disinterest) in humanity. Most behaviors and actions
of ignorance are those of intentional ignorance; in other words, they are those
of thoughtlessness and inflexibility, usually due to a lifestyle of
elitism. Nietzsche himself admits that
in a social environment, man seeks to cause pain to his fellow man: “In social dialogue, three-quarters of all
questions and answers are framed in order to hurt the participants a little
bit; this is why many men thirst after society so much: it gives them a feeling
of their own strength.”[Nietzsche, 257]
To be sure, he was not the first man to highlight this inherent
malicious urge for his fellow humans; therefore humanity’s self-awareness is
clearly existent. How can he then turn
and say that this malicious behavior is not one of self-awareness and
premeditation? It is clear that it could
not be so.
I believe that humanity’s true
self has never been so succinctly portrayed by anyone as by sociological
comedian, George Carlin, who said:
“When you get right down to it human beings
are nothing more than ordinary jungle beasts. Savages. No different from the
Cro-Magnon people who lived twenty five thousand years ago. … Our DNA hasn't
changed substantially in a hundred thousand years. We're still operating out of
the lower brain. … We'd like to think we've evolved and advanced because we can
build a computer, fly an airplane, travel underwater, we can write a sonnet,
paint a painting, compose an opera. But you know something? We're barely out of
the jungle on this planet. … What we are, is semi-civilized beasts, with
baseball caps and automatic weapons.”
[George Carlin: Life is Worth
Losing, imdb.com]
When
I heard that, I could not help but think to Freud’s ‘Id’; for like it or not,
it is our inner, instinctual mind that to this day remains an active part of
our psyche. It is essentially the same mind
that guided our species’ skills of survival so many hundreds of thousands of
years in the past and still does today. It
is a self-centered thing which thinks only of our own best interests for
survival, abandoning all else. However,
this 'bestial' mind has been recently curbed, or shaped, through the existence of
society; no longer does it immediately think to its own immediate
survival. Contemporary man has levels, or a hierarchy,
of human value that his unconscious mind abides by: strangers, friends, family,
and finally at the core, self. As his need
of and the risk to the safety of those of a certain level increases, those
above it quickly melt away. In other
words, the safety of friends supersedes that of strangers, just as that of
one’s own self supersedes that of one’s family or friends. These are not rules, but merely guidelines with which one can more accurately examine a generality in human behavior & thought. I think that Aristotle’s assertion that “every action and choice seem to aim at some
good” [Aristotle, 47] is undeniable to anyone. In the case of the human psyche, the ultimate
good is happiness, the underlying psychological foundation of which is the continued
pursuit for self-preservation: the only motive or purpose for the 'Id.' Therefore, the actions and choices of
every person aim first and before all else at his and her own continued
preservation.
Justice is a derivation from the Id: it is a system of survival; but it is an artificial ideal created by man, and its design is for the survival of society as a whole, not to the
individual members themselves. “The good of mankind is the only object of
all these laws and regulations.” [Hume, 207] In the beginning, humans had no need for a
regulatory system such as justice: they needed only heed the single-mindedness
of the basal (animal) mind, instinctual in every living being. However, as men evolved and populations
multiplied, they grew together in close quarters and quickly came to realize the need for inter-reliance for common necessities, both for convenience and curbing violent propensities for competition among themselves. Due
to the high risk of internal mischief and damage this close reliance posed for
all who inhabited these newly forming societies, a system of sociological
justice naturally developed in step.
This prescience of its own inherent immorality was the first major
psychological stride by humanity.
Unconsciously or not, it is obvious that justice is a system developed
to deter man’s natural inclination towards egoism & general callousness. It is with this in mind
that I agree with Aristotle when he states that justice is indeed the highest of all human virtues; not only does it encompass all his previously mentioned virtues, but it also (if performed solely for the sake of justice itself)
demonstrates a clear prescience and understanding of man’s inherent
inclinations on the part of man himself.
However, even after considering all of this, justice still cannot be
thought of too highly; it is merely, as Nietzsche points out, the instinctual mind’s
response to a life in society. “Justice
naturally goes back to the viewpoint of an insightful self‑preservation, that
is, to the egoism of this consideration: ‘Why should I uselessly injure myself
and perhaps not reach my goal anyway?’” [Nietzsche, 266] Through time, says
Nietzsche, men have forgotten this true origin of justice and therefore, having
no apparent selfish motives, most "just" acts have been wrongfully labeled as selfless
and virtuous.
Therefore it is clear to see that
humans are of a species which is more than aware of its own instinctual
inclinations towards egoism and malice. Nietzsche tries to absolve humanity from its
egotistical ways by maintaining that through the fact of natural inherency from
nature, we are thus clear from blame and responsibility, but the fact that we
are additionally self-aware of this inclination
ties us to responsibility for these actions.