In the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, one of Nietzsche's problems is with promises and the issue of forgetting. There is no doubt that forgetfulness or claiming to have forgotten something is a big issue amongst everyone in society. Every day, someone makes a promise or a commitment: I will get my homework done for tomorrow's class; I will pay my cell phone bill by the 30th of the month. And the next day in class or on the 30th of the month our excuse for not having it done is always "I forgot." Nietzsche addresses this by setting up two requirements for making a promise: we must have memory--or the ability to keep ourselves from forgetting a particular event--and the ability to keep that promise in the future. But to have the ability to remember, we must overcome our instincts in forgetting, so how do we get over this problem? The answer is simply through punishment.
The case Nietzsche uses as an example is the creditor/debtor relationship. The creditor gives the debtor money after receiving a promise that the money will be paid back in x amount of time. When that promise is not kept, the creditor is able to punish the debtor in anyway. According to Nietzsche this is done so the debtor does not forget to fulfill his promise of repayment. But does this make sense? Would punishment inspire remembering in the one being punished? In this instance it seems it can work in that way. To get a better picture, lets use the government/citizen relationship. The government creates a set of laws that must be followed to live in a peaceful society. The citizen must make a promise to follow these laws in order to be protected by them. If a citizen were to break the law, it would not be a case of forgetting the law or forgetting the promise made, it would just be a case of taking a bad action and they would be punished and it would be a public event. The rest of the citizens seeing this punishment, will remember to make sure they follow each law given. The public display of punishment is just an informal way of saying “this could be you.” When the viewing citizens remember this punishment, they will remember not to take the same action. Forgetfulness, in a sense, has been overcome.
When thinking about it in a more modern sense, it works. Professors, bosses, and even parents all have their way of getting over the “I forgot” excuse. When you forget to turn the lights out before going to bed, your parents may punish you by forcing you to chip in every month. After that first payment, you remember to turn off the light. When you show up to class ten minutes late, your professor calls you out. You remember to be on time. When you forget to tuck your shirt in before starting your shift, your boss will write you up. The next day you remember to be properly dressed for work.
But I still can’t help but feel there is more to overcoming forgetting than simply punishment. Isn’t the creditor just as much capable of making a mistake as is the debtor? How do they overcome that? In the case where a debtor was wrongly punished because the creditor forgot about a deadline extension previously discussed? How would this forgetfulness be addressed?
Since morality is what the nobles or in this case what the debtors have made the laws to be, unfortunately the debtor is powerless to enforce any recourse against the creditor. It is similar with the child (at least in my case). The child does not question the parent’s rules imposed upon him/her. The child, as the debtor, are not strong enough to impose their will until much later; in time, they will mature, and if they become intelligent and think for themselves, they can have the power to change the customary moral values. Nietzsche writes, “The ‘free’ man, the possessor of an enduring, unbreakable will, thus has his own standard of value: in the possession of such a will.” (p. 37) Once this ‘free’ man has come up with their own moral values they are free to act or not act on their won will.
ReplyDeleteIn the mean time, since they are powerless to act, they must forget; because the pain is to much to bear. However, when there is another situation that causes them pain they are forced to remember.
I find it difficult to agree wholeheartedly with Nietzsche’s theory of “bad conscience” arising merely from the punishment aspect of the creditor/debtor contract. Did no one possess integrity or feelings of responsibility prior to the fear of reprisal and punishment? And did empathy towards a fellow human being never come into play when choosing an action (or inaction) that may benefit one’s self in some way, but harm another? I can understand forgetfulness being an active process, at least in the sense of protecting oneself from painful memories. But wouldn’t the process of remembering and of promising come into play in events that don’t involve others? Let's say that someone spotted some appetizing berries on a bush, ate them and became ill. Would he not remember the bad experience and promise himself not to eat similar looking berries again? And would he not stop someone who he spotted about to ingest the same delicious looking berries and warn him not to eat them? This would be acting with empathy -- not wanting another person to suffer as he had. Taking this delicious berry bush example one step further, if I dare: let’s say he had just been in an argument with his friend and it was this friend he saw picking the berries. Being mad at his buddy, he chose not to warn him of the dangers of the berries and the friend dies from eating the delicious but deadly fruit. Would he not feel remorse? Would he not have a bad conscience? (Okay, enough with my inadequate berries example.) I believe that some men must have possessed feelings of responsibility, integrity, and “bad conscience” prior to the creditor/debtor contract that developed into the laws of society. Laws were just a way to regulate responsibility, to make men calculable or predictable by regulating their behavior for the better of all.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Ethan in his statement that Nietzsche's account of bad conscience is expressed in a historical sense: there is a progression of traits that develop in the course of human history. I do have to say that as plausible as Nietzsche's account may be, what is his basis in saying that this might be the way things developed in the history of man? His descent into history is based on the word choice and meanings of ancient times, but does this mean that he can make such assumptions of the past?
ReplyDeleteI agree that there has to be more to forgetting than just punishment. If there weren't than speaking strictly as a parent, our society would be in an extremely different place. My 3 year old daughter never learns the first time, no matter how many time outs I give her. Furthermore, what would account for the repeat offenders who go to jail for committing the same crimes and consequently never "learning their lesson." Experience is what can help champion this forgetting. However, to try and answer this hypothetical of the wrongly punished gets more complicated. If the debtor does not remember keeping a promise then were back to a paradox. Are we to assume that the "extraordinary privilege of responsibility", as Nietzsche puts it, of the debtor no longer exists?
ReplyDeleteI think we must keep in mind that the forgetfulness Nietzsche is writing about is our active faculty of repression, used to allow us to move on from painful events in the past. This should not be confused with the more mundane passive faculty of forgetfulness that we, as humans, experience on a daily basis and is the faculty usually being spoken of in day to day conversation. Keeping this in mind, the creditor who forgets that he offered his debtor a payment extension does not need to overcome his forgetfulness. He is never in any pain. The debtor who fails to remember that his payment is due only finds himself in an unfortunate situation where his intention to remember is not actively blocked, but blocked through our unfortunate passive capability to 'simply forget.'
ReplyDeleteThe case of the repeat offender, whether child or adult, could be seen as one testing the waters, to determine the limits of what can be accomplished without being punished. Once this is done, memory will kick in and a new habit will be formed. The other possibility is that these individuals are eschewing society's morality in favor of their own. Could this not be the older noble morality striving to break free from the chains imposed on it by society's adoption of the slave morality?
The creditor is capable of making a mistake such as forgetting they extended a deadline but no one is going to punish them. The debtor can't punish the creditor they are the ones who get punished. A kid won't punish a parent who forgot they changed what they told them to do and tried to punish the kid for doing the right thing. They wil just say they made or mistake or just cover it up. The debtor will either be punished or not punished that is all that . Until the creditor turns into the debtor they will not be punished. In certain situation I feel like the creditor relies on the debtor. If someone is owed money they need the debtor in order to get there money, without them they won't get it most likely.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Maria, I completely agree that experience would have to come into play at some point, because Nietzsche even says that prisoners don't always feel remorse or even care about punishment. Somewhere along the line, they had to over come this forgetting.
ReplyDeleteEdward, I don't think forgetting could ever be an active process. It will always be passive. You cannot intentionally forget something, because that would simply just be ignoring it. Ignoring and forgetting are two different things. We can see this in our own lives. There's a certain point where we do start to have a memory, but we don't always make use of it.
Bryan, I don't think it was possible for humans to have a sense of responsibility before entering the creditor/debtor relationship. If you look at how Nietzsche explains it, there was the period of time where humans acted as animals, instinctively and without remorse; then there was the morality of customs, were we start to see punishment; and then there was society, where we see the noble and slave moralities come through along with the sovereign individual and 'bad conscience.' It is only with society where we start to see responsibility and the ability to make promises. Before we have that ability, we do not have responsibility. In your berries example, the reason why he can promise never to eat those berries again is because he has that memory and the ability to keep the promise. He would feel remorse for letting his friend eat the berries, because he remembered the berries were poisonous. If he were to forget, he would have no feelings of remorse.
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ReplyDeleteI do not think that our forgetfulness can be overcome. I think it is natural for us to say we will do something and then we simply forget. If you think about it when we forget something we tend to not find an explanation as to why we forgot. The answer just seems to be "Oh I forgot" but never really why or for what reason did I forget. Therefore it is as Nietzsche states, forgetting is natural.
ReplyDeleteAnother point that I got out of lecture was that the creditor/debtor relationship was for the benefit of the creditor not the debtor. The fact that the debtor is being "punished" is not going to make him "learn a lesson". The whole creditor/debtor relationship was for the thrill of the creditor. The creditor gets pleasure out of punishing the debtor regardless of whether the debtor learns a lesson or not. As mentioned in class, we instinctually enjoy the pain of someone else, therefore giving rise to the creditor/debtor relationship (not to punish the debtor so he remembers to keep his word the next time).