The Good of Evil - Morality and Friedrich Nietzsche's ethical views tested.

Geoffrey Hamilton

November 21, 1994

While good and evil are generally considered subjective demarcations today - what is 'your evil' is not always 'my evil' - what remains uncontested in regards to these concepts and what has been maintained is that good and evil essentially exist. Good and evil survive within the body of human beliefs, with some alleged exceptions, because they are useful. They function like left and right, up and down or in and out. They serve to help stake a value to things so one might believe one thing and oppose something else.

Friedrich Nietzsche unintentionally suggests this idea of use, ". . . evil impulses are just as useful. . . as the good". In this aphorism he asserts that something's usefulness should not determine whether it is good or bad, he calls the idea, "a fundamentally false theory of morality." He then he points out how evil is often proved useful, but he fails to offer an alternative in this passage leaving his reader to guess what version of good and bad he uses to decide when we should or should not do something. We are left with usefulness still being the standard. Most importantly, Nietzsche fails to persuade himself in his entreaties, in that if something is useless in that it is false (like the 'usefulness standard' of morality), why not believe it? It could be 'good'. Secondly, if something is useful, even if it's generally considered evil, he seems to consider it good. Therefore usefulness is a standard of his idea of good.

What he also fails at in this aphorism is getting to the heart of the issue of good and evil: is the distinction between 'good' and 'evil' more than arbitrary? People seem to have only one morality, and that is the one which is allied with how one is to survive. Each person's ethic consists of judgments of value subtly and psychologically equated with the idea that one is moved forward in life (the good) or moved backward (the evil). While, out of necessity, it is all executed by ignoring the improbability of succeeding in either direction when one can only exist on a sphere like earth.

To refute the claim that morality is arbitrary there must be a non-arbitrary action possible and what can be called non-arbitrary? Is a law not arbitrary? A law is the result of the will of select people who, between themselves, can't escape acting out of the wealth of human expediencies. Is there an a priori evil? Can evil even exist without the idea of something better, which would then make it a relative existence? It seems that outside the realm of an unchallenged assertion one cannot find a single instance where an idea or an action can be said to be non-arbitrary. Where one finds absolutes proclaimed is usually under the yoke of faith and how non-arbitrary are faiths? By default then distinctions between good and evil must be arbitrary. But is that all that can be said?

If as Nietzsche says the good of evil is manifested when the "ploughshare of evil" can revitalize the "exhausted" land (the good), then when can something be good or does good mean evil? Does he even have a distinction? He does in that he states, "It is the strongest and most evil spirits who have up till now advanced mankind the most". What relevance is it that evil advances mankind unless he believes advancing is a good. Nietzsche's most bizarre oversight comes from the reason that good is bad in his view and his reason is that it exhausts the 'land'. In other words, good destroys the 'land' and prevents 'advancement' for mankind. His reason for why evil is good is that it gives the 'land' a chance for renewal. But the renewal of the 'land' will very soon get old and that "only the old is the good" (his evil). But he ultimately wants growth and that is both his good and his evil, so....

While on the surface his treatise sounds reasonable, he destroys his own premise that evil is superior to good by rhetorically equating the two and eliminating their meanings. This kind of mix up, however, is unavoidable when departing from faith to reason in the imparting of morality.

Three general a priori assertions could be made by reason to claim that there is a true 'good and evil', one; that a god said it was true, two; that this information is somewhere in space and finally; that the information is in our genes.

First, what relevance is it that a stronger being, like a god, has an idea about right and wrong? Its relevance is to go against a god's wishes one must face his wrath. But if this god has a reason to believe in a specific good and evil why all the secrecy? Let us all know. We are basicly talking about people claiming to speak for a god. It is a scam. Like a government citing security, those who cite a god's unimaginable morality can remain flexible within the undefined plan which secrecy allows, with the end result that this god's morality is just another human based expedient morality.

Second, where in space is morality? Under a rock, behind a tree or, perhaps, in the actions of things? In a rock slide that crushes a village, is there a morality involved? Can we deduce from observing human actions a true morality? But everything is natual no distinctions can be made. There will always be some who must try.

A social scientist once made a computer model of types of people he said were either good or evil. The model set out to decide which side, by its characteristic traits, would survive longer than the other and he conclude that good always triumphed over evil in his model. Confusing survival of the fittest and good was his evidence for this truth. While failing to see why good has not yet triumphed over evil, considering that it has had thousands of years to do so, he more importantly failed to ask why something surviving as a species makes that species moral stance a priori true. Give that species a little more time and it will soon disappear. The argument is again one of something being relatively better than something else in order that it be true, this time mixing up how everyone uses any expedient to survive, including morality, and making it a reason for moral judgement.

Thirdly, can good and evil be found in our genes? Unfortunatly for some, this makes no difference to the problem. As with a computer program, it doesn t make it true knowledge just because information is there.

But if one nevertheless accepts that we all believe in good and evil and that the reason we do is that is because this information is in our genes, then this makes some sense. It is then possible that the designation of good and evil is functioning to mask a self-centred syndrome and at the same time to glorify it.

In the same way that governments wrap themselves in religion or law or nationalism, humans, individually, wrap themselves in the solipsisms which they live by. People hold that good and evil do exist in order that their enemies be subject to the evils that they themselves would not want to be subject to.

What is in our genes that designates good and evil then? Is good and evil peering back out at us in an electron microscope? What can morality be but something within the genes that prevents us from perishing. In the same way that a rock on a slope is prevented from slipping down the slope because of the way it can 'use' the shape of some other rocks underneath it, good and evil is a manifestation of genes, among many, that prevent us from dying.

For example, say we live amongst a tribe. When we recognize a tribe member's departure will greatly decrease our ability to gather food we tell ourselves this is bad, and we say to the departing member that they are being evil, hoping that they will believe it and stay. If they don't stay, the strength of the tribe's belief that this person is bad can allow it to justify force: a justification which tells its members that they won't be subject to the same force as long as they also don't reduce the tribe's ability to live. Thus the other rocks stay under you.

Similarly, a random murderer is evil because you could have been the victim ; whereas we can murder by any name we choose to call it because we think we can never be our own enemies. Again all that matters is that our position is maintained or strengthened.

This holds true in any abstract discussion of morality, for how can we escape our own interests? Even the willingness to sacrifice oneself for something else is motivated by love of oneself. Therefore 'good' and 'evil' are not even at issue in any discussion, only what aids ones survival.

Morality is just one ruse in the battery of tricks that maintains those other rocks under us. With the added feature, since we seem to be self-moved to some degree, of preventing us from slipping off the supporting rocks on our own accord.

To answer the crucial question, is the distinction between good and evil more than arbitrary? It is in one sense only, that within the context of at least one form of life, humanity. It is a mask for the premise that keeps humanity alive, but essentially, as was stated earlier, the distinction between good and evil is not more than arbitrary.

What then is the good of evil, the evil of good? Nietzsche believed survival and advancement were good, but as he himself canceled out the relevance of such a distinction, good is meaningless. The good of evil, as a useful concept, can only have the semi-life of a accelerated particle under such a frame. Good and evil instead are tricks, or concepts that mask a desire to survive on the part of individual humans and humanity. It is just one of the many tricks in our genetic repertoire that makes us feel that we may be going somewhere, when we, in fact, can only go in chaotic circles: circles of galaxies, circles in galaxies, of systems, around suns, on planets, between life and death, of logic, and most significantly, to and from work. (23/11/94)