There are perhaps too many
obscure places in my entry, I am afraid,--- all demanding an elucidation. However,
I shall leave them unelucidated, as a sort of challenge to the readers to find
the key by their own devices. In one case only shall I provide an elucidation. "Neat
German precision" in the second paragraph seems totally out of place, as the
context is not even about Nietzsche, but about a consummately Russian masterpiece
of a shining genius of Russian literature, the writer most admired by Nietzsche
himself -- Fedor Dostoyevsky. So, what is the meaning then of “neat German
precision ”? In fact, this is a Russian idiomatic expression (the literal
translation would be “clean German workmanship”) which signifies a very
high level of workmanship, and it is usually conferred on a Russian master
craftsman and artist. (Who ever said that the Russians were xenophobic? They do
appreciate what is best in foreign cultures and consider themselves the last
repository of Western Civilization. Peter the Great was a great example of a
Russian patriot respecting foreign achievements and avidly learning from the
West for the greater glory of Mother Russia.)
***
This rather complicated entry
with an honestly inscrutable title strings together a number of passages from
Nietzsche’s Second Essay (Guilt, Bad Conscience and the Like) of Zur
Genealogie der Moral. The bulk of this entry centers around (16) and
(17), but (14) and (15) are leading up to these ‘paragraphs,’
particularly in articulating the Nietzschean concept of bad conscience, which
we cannot do without. It is therefore with bad conscience that we ought
to start off our entry, but, instead, I feel compelled to launch the following
Russian preamble:
Leaving aside all definitions,
and guided by instinct only, we can construe the meanings of the two
parts in the title with sufficient accuracy of approximation, to venture
that we know exactly what ‘bad conscience’ and ‘instinct
for freedom’ are, and that these two come together with a
neat ‘German’ precision in the matter of the Crime and Punishment of
Fedor Dostoyevsky’s Fedor Raskolnikov, namely, in instinct for freedom
being the actual cause of Raskolnikov’s crime, the crime becoming
the actual cause of bad conscience, the latter suppressing ‘instinct
for freedom,’ the latter seeking to be released through the
repentance, admission of guilt, and punishment, thus completing the circle of
freedom, which, as we find out, could not have been completed without a bad
conscience, to start with!
Having said that, let us see how
Nietzsche, somewhat differently, approaches and handles the subject that, we
must acknowledge, does not focus on, or even mention Raskolnikov, but is
entirely of his own making, although his notable reference to the Russian "fatalism
without rebellion," in Genealogie-2-15, suggests that Dostoyevsky may
not have been entirely off Nietzsche's mind...
To be continued…
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