“This need” (here Nietzsche speaks of the need to unconditionally obey commands i.e. ‘thou shalt’) “seeks to be satisfied and to fill out its form with content; in doing so it grasps about wildly, according to the degree of its strength, impatience and tension, with little discrimination, as a crude appetite, and accepts whatever any commander- parent, teacher, law, class, prejudice, public opinion- shouts in its ear. The strange narrowness of human evolution, its hesitations, its delays, its frequent retrogressions and rotations, are due to the fact that the herd instinct of obedience has been inherited best and at cost of the art of commanding”.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil).
When Nietzsche so quickly dismisses the constraints of social norms and standards as something which is practiced by “the herd” (no doubt intended as a derogatory label) does he take into account the behaviour of those who he takes to be free from this sort of mindless commandeering? You know, the Übermensch. The ones who are exempt from having to comply. Does he consider that the freedom, which he only attributes to special minority, from narrow moral constraints, if extrapolated to general society, would lead to complete anarchy? The world would be filled with danger and hurt. He does, of course, consider this. This is precisely the crux of his theory.
When Nietzsche so quickly dismisses the constraints of social norms and standards as something which is practiced by “the herd” (no doubt intended as a derogatory label) does he take into account the behaviour of those who he takes to be free from this sort of mindless commandeering? You know, the Übermensch. The ones who are exempt from having to comply. Does he consider that the freedom, which he only attributes to special minority, from narrow moral constraints, if extrapolated to general society, would lead to complete anarchy? The world would be filled with danger and hurt. He does, of course, consider this. This is precisely the crux of his theory.
In other words, there can only be an Übermensch if there is a herd, like there can only be a master if there is a slave. Does this seem fair or even rational? It would not seem fair to Marx and would not seem rational to Kant, but we all do know that hierarchy is an essential quality of human society. It is the way nature has deemed things to be.
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