Phlosophy 152 Philosophy of Human Nature Darwall Fall 1996 NIETZSCHE II I Recall that an important theme of Marx's is that many of our moral and political beliefs are best explained, not by our thinking that we really have good evidence or reasons for them, but by economic factors. For example, Marx argues that what explains why people begin to believe in the doctrine of natural human rights to freedom in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is because of a fundamental economic shift from feudalism to capitalism and the need for free, independent wage laborers. We might put this point by saying that, for Marx, these ideas are nothing but an ideology. ("Morality is a white lie." 254) They are expained by something other than rational factors, and we are able to maintain them only be remaining ignorant of their real sources. II Nietzsche makes a similar argument about the very idea of morality. Nietzsche thinks that morality is an ideology in the very same sense. A. good/bad vs. good/evil B. morality as involving the ideals of equality, responsibility (presupposing free will), and evil (connection to cruelty) III Last time, we saw how Nietzsche thinks that the necessary presuppositions of morality are false. For example, there is no such thing as free will. IV So why do we have this idea. Where does this "ideology" come from? A. good/bad and natural strength B. the resentment of the weak C. blame as externalized, impersonal anger D. morality and the ideas of moral good and evil as expressions of this anger E. Therefore, morality is a set of ideas that is kept in place by underlying resentments that cannot be more honestly and healthily expressed. V Thus Nietzsche believes that the idea of morality is itself a symptom of a certain kind of sickness or decay. The will to power as natural.