From Consciousness to Conscience: Cognitive Aspects in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Conscience

1

Numerous studies on Nietzsche’s oeuvre have concentrated on his theory of consciousness (Bewusstsein), particularly within the context of the philosophical tradition and contemporary philosophy of mind.^[1] Likewise, Nietzsche’s narrative regarding the genesis of conscience (Gewissen) in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is a recurrent theme in the discussions on his moral psychology.^[2] Nevertheless, the interplay between the concepts of Bewusstsein and Gewissen, as well as the significance of cognitive abilities in shaping conscience, has not undergone comprehensive examination within the scholarly literature.

Just to mention some noteworthy exceptions, Mathias Risse, in a significant article on the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality, links bad conscience with the emergence of mental interiority.^[3] Paul Katsafanas, in his influential paper on Nietzsche’s theory of consciousness, elucidates how bad conscience was conceptually articulated as guilt.^[4] João Constâncio, in discussions regarding the relationships between genealogy and normativity, posits that responsibility and reason presuppose an interpretation of reality using temporal and teleological categories, through which humans initially oriented themselves, albeit pre-reflectively, in their environment.^[5] Recently, Maudemarie Clark, in a critique of Mattia Riccardi’s approach to consciousness, references certain aspects of these issues, such as the development of an inner world in the genealogical narrative and the process by which unconscious mental states become conscious.^[6]

To examine these inquiries, I intend to scrutinize, in considerable depth, the interplay between consciousness and conscience. I aim to connect these seemingly disparate genealogies within Nietzsche’s oeuvre: the narrative concerning the emergence of consciousness as an epistemic faculty and the depiction of the formation of conscience as a moral faculty. My objective is to elucidate Nietzsche’s perspective on how the expansion of the human cognitive sphere has engendered certain mental capacities, subsequently enabling the development of a multifaceted moral psychology.

To begin with, it is imperative to elucidate the notion of consciousness under scrutiny in this paper. Initially, consciousness will be construed as self-consciousness, denoting an individual’s capacity to recognize and articulate, through language, his or her own mental states. This introspective faculty, in turn, arises from a developmental process encompassing various tiers of awareness, spanning from the experiential “what-it-is-likeness” (phenomenal consciousness)^[7] to the aptitude for discerning and expressing one’s mental states. In subsequent sections, I will expound upon Nietzsche’s conjecture concerning the genesis of consciousness, considering its manifold levels, correlate this conjecture with his narrative about the origin of conscience, and examine a constellation of cognitive abilities indispensable for the evolution of conscience as a consciousness of guilt.

Moreover, before exploring in detail the interplay between the origins of consciousness and conscience, it is fundamentally important to clarify the relationship between these two faculties. Conscience is a reflective faculty that judges our thoughts and actions based on a certain evaluative standard. It therefore presupposes self-consciousness. I present the process through which, according to Nietzsche, consciousness and conscience emerge. There are two interconnected narratives, but they are distinctly located in temporal terms. The morality of custom, which ultimately results in the formation of conscience, first creates an inner world as the outcome of the internalization of drives. This inner world represents a first glimpse of awareness, the “animal bad conscience,” which, strictly speaking, is neither self-consciousness nor conscience, but rather a bad feeling. In the process of socialization, the need for communication engenders consciousness and other cognitive abilities. After a long period, these abilities allow for the interpretation of the content of the original animal bad conscience as (moral) conscience. Humans, already in possession of self-consciousness, will recognize the animal bad conscience, after being moralized by the ascetic priest, as “consciousness of guilt.”

2

Nietzsche examines the concept of consciousness through a naturalistic lens: he posits that consciousness represents a late-stage outcome in the evolution of our species. In stark contrast to the prominent position accorded to consciousness in modern philosophy, Nietzsche contends that it constitutes a relatively recent cognitive faculty.^[8] He conjectures that, for a significant duration, prehistoric humans existed devoid of cognitive awareness of their own mental states. In his view, they inhabited a mode of existence akin to most animals: ensnared within instantaneous or short-term perceptions, engulfed by forgetfulness, and driven by the imperatives of survival.

The development of consciousness, the process of “becoming conscious of something [Sich-Bewusst-Werdens]” (GS 354), can be theoretically reconstructed. In his genealogical narrative, Nietzsche delineates how early humans lacked consciousness. Initially, their actions were driven solely by unconscious drives (GM II 16). Consciousness, emerging as a late phenomenon, developed through the process of human socialization, during which individuals were compelled to coexist and had to suppress their aggressive drives. Through the avoidance of externalizing these drives, socialization fostered the expansion of mental interiority and the emergence of cognitive abilities. The advent of mental awareness in humans constituted such a profound transformation that it can be likened to the transition of aquatic creatures to terrestrial beings.

From now on they were to go on foot and “carry themselves” where they had previously been carried by the water: a horrible heaviness lay upon them. They felt awkward doing the simplest tasks; for this new, unfamiliar world they no longer had their old leaders, the regulating drives that unconsciously guided them safely – they were reduced to thinking, inferring, calculating, connecting cause and effect, these unhappy ones, reduced to their “consciousness,” to their poorest and most erring organ! […] The entire inner world, originally thin as if inserted between two skins, has spread and unfolded, has taken on depth, breadth, height to the same extent that man’s outward discharging has been obstructed (GM II 16).

Nietzsche’s analogy proves quite enlightening: prior to the advent of consciousness, humans possessed adaptive behaviors directed by their unconscious drives. As soon as an embryonic consciousness emerged, they were compelled to direct their attention toward cognitive abilities that had previously operated unconsciously, such as reasoning, inference, and planning. In psychological terms, executive functions began to transition into cognitive awareness, impeding their erstwhile seamless functionality and necessitating human engagement with a novel realm of representations.^[9]

In light of this, Nietzsche raises the question: why did consciousness emerge? What potential adaptive or vital advantage could have driven the emergence of consciousness, considering that (1) it stems from a realm of unconscious drives and (2) it is not essential for performing the executive functions?

We could think, feel, will and remember, and we could also “act” in every sense of that word, and yet none of all this would have to “enter our consciousness” (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Even now, for that matter, by far the greatest portion of our life actually takes place without this mirror effect; and this is true even of our thinking, feeling, and willing life, however offensive this may sound to older philosophers. For what purpose, then, any consciousness at all when it is in the main superfluous? (GS 354).

Nietzsche asserts that consciousness is “in the main” superfluous for performing actions necessary for an animal’s survival in its environment. However, this does not imply that consciousness lacks any function.^[10] On the contrary, Nietzsche contends that the pressure exerted by the demands of sociability and the fragile physical characteristics of humans were responsible for the emergence of consciousness. This emergence stems from the necessity to communicate vital demands. Initially, this communication takes the form of gestures and gradually evolves into the use of articulate language. Mental interiority had to be populated with representations, followed by attention – akin to mirroring – of these mental states, and ultimately, they needed to be described through a language capable of conveying them. Consequently, consciousness, specifically self-consciousness (reflective consciousness), evolved in tandem with the development of language: “In brief, the development of language and the development of consciousness (not of reason but merely of the way reason enters consciousness) go hand in hand” (GS 354).

It is essential to emphasize that the emergence of self-consciousness is, above all, a socially mediated phenomenon. In anticipation of Wittgenstein’s private language argument,^[11] Nietzsche posits that the reflective dimension of consciousness results from social interaction. Therefore, we cannot precisely speak of private access to the mental contents themselves. The consciousness of mental states and their communication are phenomena that occur within a public context, as they are mediated linguistically:

My idea is, as you see, that consciousness does not realty belong to man’s individual existence but rather to his social or herd nature; that, as follows from this, it has developed subtlety only insofar as this is required by social or herd utility. Consequently, given the best will in the world to understand ourselves as individually as possible, “to know ourselves,” each of us will always succeed in becoming conscious only of what is not individual but “average” (GS 354).

This intertwining of self-consciousness and language has led Katsafanas to insist on the thesis that, for Nietzsche, conscious mental states are only the conceptually articulated ones, understood as linguistically articulated.^[12] Brian Leiter and Riccardi have objected to this idea, and I concur with their arguments.^[13] The central disagreement centers on Katsafanas’s denial that some degree of awareness can be considered conscious. Katsafanas asserts that Nietzsche applies the terms “conscious” and “consciousness” exclusively to conceptual mental contents. Furthermore, according to Katsafanas, Nietzsche argues that a conscious mental state must be linguistically articulated. Contrarily, following Leiter and Riccardi, I contend that Katsafanas’s account is accurate concerning self-consciousness but not regarding certain degrees of awareness, which can be perceived as different forms of consciousness. In this context, I can enumerate five points that weaken Katsafanas’s argument:

1. The literature upon which Katsafanas bases his argument regarding conceptual content acknowledges some degree of consciousness without assuming conceptual-linguistic articulation.^[14]

2. The higher-order theory of consciousness adopted by Katsafanas does not preclude consciousness without conceptual-linguistic articulation.^[15]

3. Katsafanas asserts that Nietzsche’s model of consciousness aligns with Schopenhauer’s concept of reason, which encompasses language and abstract knowledge, although he concedes that sometimes Schopenhauer attributes rudimentary conceptual capacities to some nonhuman animals.^[16] Schopenhauer regards reason as an exclusively human faculty. Nonhuman animals possess the faculty of understanding and can represent causal relationships. Consequently, some nonhuman animals experience a degree of awareness, even though they lack corresponding words for their cognitive representations.^[17] Katsafanas agrees with this, but he disputes that such cognitive representations are conscious. Schopenhauer, in contrast, affirms that intuitive cognition can be seen as a kind of consciousness despite its lack of concepts: “We do attribute consciousness to animals; so the concept of consciousness coincides with that of representation in general, of whatever kind, even though the word Bewußtseyn, consciousness, is derived from Wissen, knowledge.”^[18]

4. Katsafanas also acknowledges the awareness of certain phenomenologically articulated perceptions (objects)^[19] but maintains that Nietzsche might not categorize this type of awareness of mental states as strictly conscious because it lacks conceptual-linguistic articulation. Nonetheless, Nietzsche regards phenomenologically articulated perceptions as a form of consciousness, since the “phenomenalism of the inner world” generalizes and simplifies even sense objects:

   The development of consciousness as a governmental apparatus: only accessible to generalizations. Even what the eye shows comes into consciousness as generalized and adjusted (Nachlass 1885, 34[187], KSA 11.484).

    

   I admit that a strong instinct of this kind [our pleasure in simplicity, transparency, regularity, brightness] exists. It is so strong that it governs among all the activities of our senses, and reduces, regulates, assimilates, etc., for us the abundance of real perceptions (unconscious ones –), presenting them to our consciousness only in this trimmed form (Nachlass 1885, 34[49], KSA 11.435–6).

5. Nietzsche occasionally acknowledges the presence of conscious states in nonhuman animals (GS 11, D 26). Katsafanas also recognizes this: “GS 11 suggests that some non-human animals are conscious.”^[20] Despite this, he maintains that, for Nietzsche, consciousness is a property exclusive to conceptual-linguistic mental contents. Nietzsche, in turn, explicitly asserted that concepts are not exclusively linguistic, since they are primarily “pictorial signs.” The definition of the concept as pictorial signs (Bildzeichen) in BGE 268 (a section related to GS 354)^[21] dissociates concept and word: “Words are acoustic signs for concepts; concepts, though, are more or less determinate pictorial signs for sensations that occur together and frequently recur, for groups of sensations.” For Katsafanas, Nietzsche does not mean that concepts are “mental images,” because these are only a case of nonconceptual perceptions, that is, perceptions that are not yet conceptualized by a word that picks up some features of the object (generalization) and expresses them.^[22] Nietzsche, however, believes that there is a continuum of degrees of consciousness:

   The need to think, the entire consciousness [Bewußtheit], only came about as a result of the need to communicate. First signs, then concepts, finally “reason” in the usual sense. In itself, the richest organic life can play its game without consciousness [Bewußtsein]: but as soon as its existence is linked to the co-existence of other animals, a need for consciousness also arises (Nachlass 1884/85, 30[10], KSA 11.356).

Thus, Katsafanas’ linguistic reading of that passage in BGE 268 is textually implausible, and the fact, as he notes, that it is the only occurrence of the term “Bildzeichen” in the entire Kritische Gesamtausgabe does not negate its implausibility.

But more than the plausibility of Katsafanas’ thesis, what is at stake here is whether Nietzsche endorses the strict association between concept, language, and consciousness. To begin with, I must acknowledge that Nietzsche emphasizes several times in his work the connection between consciousness and language. Furthermore, Nietzsche also posits the existence of types of mental states (feelings, affects, thoughts) that are not conceptually articulated and claims that they become conscious only when expressed in words. Nevertheless, the central question remains whether some form of cognitive awareness requires linguistic articulation. In the case of human self-consciousness, it is undeniably necessary; for the purpose of communication, sound signs (Tonzeichen) are attributed to pictorial signs (Bildzeichen). This mental process as a whole gives rise to the simplification and generalization that constitute phenomenalism and perspectivism, characteristics that determine the “superficial and falsifying” nature of consciousness. However, this does not imply that pictorial signs are not conscious at some level, since they are, according to Nietzsche, conceptually articulated, albeit without linguistic articulation. In fact, the behaviors of some nonhuman animals suggest that they possess forms of thinking, such as inference and planning, which presuppose a high level of cognitive awareness of their own mental states.

If so, would the discriminatory capacity of an amoeba confer consciousness upon it? Katsafanas has posed this question.^[23] To confront this challenge, I contend that Katsafanas did not fully grasp the radical nature of Leibniz’s continuum thesis, as adopted by Nietzsche. As Günter Abel has pointed out:

The character of “intelligent,” “spiritual,” “mental,” and “living” activities can be found in various degrees of realization in the organic and beyond. Thus, according to Nietzsche, the organic world always already presupposes and consists in “continuous interpretation processes” […], and hence always already presupposes and consists in “intelligent” activities (in the broadest sense of the term) such as identifying, localizing, perceiving, demarcating, classifying, and estimating.^[24]

Just as we can discern antecedent life forms in the inorganic world (BGE 36), we can also observe, within the organic realm, antecedent forms of purposeful responses in behaviors lacking conscious intent.^[25] Consequently, having a discriminatory capacity does not inherently imply consciousness, but it may involve a certain degree of awareness in the act of discrimination. Furthermore, a discriminatory capacity may possess a classificatory nature, as emphasized by Riccardi.^[26]

The issue, once more, hinges on the assumption of an inherent connection between consciousness, concept, and language, as posited by Katsafanas. A classificatory capacity need not be obligatorily a conceptual-linguistic one. Discriminatory capacity results from the act of distinguishing different mental images (a comparison between tokens), while a classificatory capacity involves recognizing common properties in various mental images (the identification of types). Such a mental state possesses conceptual content, albeit devoid of linguistic symbols. A nonhuman animal does not flee from every encountered animal but only from those it recognizes (classifies) as threats. Thus, we can deduce that discriminatory and classificatory capacities, even though not expressed linguistically, exhibit a certain level of consciousness, even in nonhuman animals. Nietzsche claims that this kind of experience is a germinal form of self-consciousness: the animal “assesses the effect it produces upon the perceptions of other animals and from this learns to look back upon itself, to take itself ‘objectively,’ it too has its degree of self-knowledge” (D 26). As Riccardi has asserted, although nonhuman animals lack articulate language, “the picture sketched in D 26 suggests that elementary forms of self-knowledge are already present in the animal realm in consequence of a certain animal’s being confronted with other animals – either conspecific or not.”^[27]

Despite its shortcomings, the assumption of a necessary connection between consciousness and language does not fundamentally undermine Katsafanas’ argumentation. Many of his conclusions can still be embraced with some modifications. For instance, Katsafanas distinguishes four levels of awareness of mental states: (1) unconscious nonconceptual states; (2) pre-reflective nonconceptual states; (3) conscious conceptual states; (4) self-conscious conceptual states.^[28] While I believe that this four-level structure can be retained, I propose the following distinctions: (1a) unconscious states (instincts/drives); (2a) phenomenal consciousness (phenomenologically articulated, pre-reflective states); (3a) noetic consciousness (non-linguistically, conceptually articulated states);^[29] (4a) linguistically articulated states (reflective consciousness/human self-consciousness).

I must emphasize that the disagreement here is not merely verbal. There is a crucial difference, for example, between (3) and (3a). Katsafanas considers (3) a conscious mental state because it is a linguistically articulated state. The conception of noetic consciousness (3a), in turn, admits conceptually articulated mental states that are not linguistically articulated. I also underline that phenomenologically articulated states (2a) are conscious, even though they are neither conceptually nor linguistically articulated.

Taking a bottom-up approach, the first level pertains to the realm of the unconscious (1a). Nietzsche emphasizes that a significant portion of the mental realm is unconscious, active, and crucial for our actions: “what we call consciousness [Bewusstheit] constitutes only one state of our spiritual and psychic world (perhaps a sick state) and by no means the whole of it” (GS 357). Nietzsche draws on Leibniz’s notion of potential knowledge, where consciousness, understood as actual knowledge, does not encompass the entirety of the mental domain.^[30] In fact, Nietzsche frequently asserts that conscious thinking does not stand in opposition to instinctive activities (BGE 3). This idea not only resonates with Leibniz’s concepts of continuity and potential knowledge but also his notion of petites perceptions. According to Leibniz, apperception (consciousness) arises from the act of focusing on a collection of tiny perceptions that are not individually distinct, much like when one hears the roar of the sea without being aware of the sound of each wave. Nietzsche views the unconscious realm as instinctive. Thinking, for him, emerges from the interplay of drives (BGE 36). These drives, in turn, belong to a psychophysical, dynamic realm postulated by Nietzsche. From a psychological standpoint, drives are behavioral “dispositions that induce affective orientations,” as accurately formulated by Katsafanas.^[31]

In Dawn (1881), Nietzsche had already explained the emergence of conscious states using an argument similar to the idea of petites perceptions: “Language and the prejudices upon which language is based hinder in many ways our understanding of inner processes and drives: for example, through the fact that words exist only for superlative degrees of these processes and drives” (D 115). Here, Nietzsche is addressing not only the generalizing and simplifying nature of language but also the notion that we become self-conscious of certain drives only when they reach a specific magnitude or intensity. However, we cannot conclude that the bounds of reflective consciousness encompass the entirety of the mental world simply because we only have words for extreme cases. In Nietzsche’s words: “Wrath, hate, love, compassion, craving, knowing, joy, pain – these are all names for extreme states: the milder middle degrees, to say nothing of the lower ones that are constantly in play, elude us and yet it is precisely they that weave the web of our character and our destiny” (D 115).

This passage suggests the existence of minute and unconscious mental states that profoundly influence our affective life. Consciousness is but an amplified expression of the relationship between these states. In this context, we are discussing two extreme aspects of our mental life: the unconscious and conscious thought (i. e., reflexive, linguistically articulated consciousness). Between these two extremes, we may assume, in accordance with the continuum thesis, the existence of other states, many of which are not only beyond our observation but also beyond our speculation. Among these, it appears possible to identify at least two: phenomenal consciousness and noetic consciousness.

Phenomenal consciousness (2a): the experience of having phenomenologically articulated mental states, specifically the experience of “being something.” This entails having perceptions and reacting to environmental stimuli in a pre-reflective manner, devoid of conceptual or linguistic articulation. Nietzsche wrote about this issue, stating: “Animals don’t know anything about themselves, they don’t even know anything about the world” (Nachlass 1882/83, 5[1], KSA 10.215). Nietzsche attributes this form of consciousness to humans in the early stages of their existence as a species. Phenomenal consciousness thus serves as the foundation upon which conceptually articulated and linguistically articulated consciousness have been constructed.

As we have observed, Nietzsche explicitly asserts not only that thought does not rely on consciousness as linguistically articulated content, but also that humans, like other animals, could exist without it. This raises the question of the role of consciousness in this strict sense (as reflective or self-consciousness). For survival, we can utilize executive functions without the self-consciousness based on language and communication. Executive functions not only enable automatic responses to stimuli but also presuppose a form of reasoning and the planning of actions. Since these functions are not exclusive to humans, we can deduce that humans share a certain type of consciousness with other animals. This implies the existence of mental states that encompass not only perception but also memory, recognition, discrimination, and classification – in essence, a proper semantic articulation. Therefore, in addition to consciousness as linguistically articulated awareness (4a), we can discuss consciousness as conceptually articulated awareness/noetic consciousness (3a), as the latter entails metacognition and semantics. At this level of awareness, concepts are mental images, without corresponding linguistic symbols.

Taking for granted the four levels of consciousness, I propose the existence of two perspectives for analyzing each of them. From a physiological standpoint, they originate from drives; from a psychological perspective, they can be elucidated by a higher-order theory of consciousness.^[32] Thus, there are two viewpoints on the same phenomenon. Nietzsche, akin to Freud, conceives of the drive as a concept situated between the somatic and the psychical.^[33] Consequently, there is always a psychological state description corresponding to a physical one.

On the one hand, there is considerable textual evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that Nietzsche subscribes to a higher-order theory of consciousness:

We imagine that what is commanding and highest resides in our consciousness. Ultimately, we have a double brain: we encompass in the word “consciousness” our capacity itself to will, feel and think something of our own willing, feeling and thinking (Nachlass 1885, 34[87], KSA 11.448).

 

NB. “Consciousness” – to what extent the represented representation, the represented will, the represented feeling (known to ourselves alone) are totally superficial! Our inner world, too, “appearance”! (Nachlass 1884, 26[49], KSA 11.161, translation modified).

On the other hand, the emergence of conscious mental states from drives is a recurring theme in Nietzsche’s work. He describes humans as a social structure (Gesellschaftsbau) of drives (BGE 12, 19). These drives, particularly in his posthumous notes, have a physiological aspect related to the will to power. Thus, Nietzsche emphasizes the multiple, dynamic, and plastic character of drives. All mental events, including conscious ones, arise from dynamic relations and momentary arrangements between drives:^[34] “Every thought, every feeling, every will is not born of one particular drive but is a total state, a whole surface of the whole consciousness, and results from how the power of all the drives that constitute us is fixed at that moment” (Nachlass 1885/86, 1[61], KSA 12.26).

3

In the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche offers an account of the emergence of conscience. This process began when strong individuals subjugated the weak, creating the first human communities. These formerly nomadic and antisocial animals were compelled to live together, which led them to inhibit their aggressive drives, resulting in the internalization of these drives. Consequently, this mandatory socialization and the internalization of cruelty gave rise to a mental world:

All instincts which are not discharged outwardly turn inwards – this is what I call the internalization of man: with it there now evolves in man what will later be called his ‘soul’. The whole inner world, originally stretched thinly as though between two layers of skin, was expanded and extended itself and gained depth, breadth and height in proportion to the degree that the external discharge of man’s instincts was obstructed. Those terrible bulwarks with which state organizations protected themselves against the old instincts of freedom – punishments are a primary instance of this kind of bulwark – had the result that all those instincts of the wild, free, roving man were turned backwards, against man himself (GM II 16).

Humans, at that time, were nothing more than a “raw material of people and semi-animals [Rohstoff von Volk und Halbthier],” and the internalization of cruelty produced in them a feeling of uneasiness, what Nietzsche calls “animal bad conscience” (GM II 20). Socialization thus represented “a violent separation of man from his animal past” (GM II 16). Bad conscience was, at first, a malaise of a wild animal that was forced to be controlled by society, “like an animal imprisoned in a cage” (GM III 20). According to Nietzsche, it is the feeling of guilt in its “raw state [Rohzustand].” Therefore, animal bad conscience should not be understood as moral conscience but as a very primitive form of it, which has arisen with the first glimpse of human self-awareness. The emergence of conscience relates to the history of how humans interpreted that bad feeling differently until it became identified with guilt.

Nietzsche sees the process of socialization as a kind self-domestication. Through the morality of custom, humans become increasingly docile, less violent, and obedient:

One will already have guessed what actually happened with all of this and under all of this: that will to self-torment, that suppressed cruelty of the animal-human who had been made inward, scared back into himself, of the one locked up in the “state” for the purpose of taming, who invented the bad conscience in order to cause himself pain after the more natural outlet for this desire to cause pain was blocked (GM II 22).

As I have previously pointed out, this is also the beginning of a process of the enlargement of some mental abilities. This process encompasses not only the emergence of a kind of awareness but also the development of basic cognitive skills. Over time, these skills have enabled the rise of a sense of responsibility and obligation. According to Nietzsche, obedience to norms, the foundation of morality, arises from the coercive power that a community imposes on individuals:

Wherever there is a community and, consequently, a morality of custom, there rules as well the idea that the punishment for an offense against the custom falls above all on the community. […] The community can compel the individual to compensate another individual or the community for the present damage resulting from his action (D 9, translation modified).

The era of the morality of custom traces its origins back to a prehistoric time that Nietzsche asserts “has determined the character of humankind” (D 18). In this prehistoric period, conscience and the entire cognitive apparatus associated with it, including self-consciousness, the comprehension of other individuals as intentional beings, and the capacity to make promises, keep them, and fulfill them, began to gradually take shape through a rudimentary form of private law: a “contractual” relationship between a “creditor” and a “debtor.” Nietzsche views this as the “paradoxical task” that nature has assigned to the human animal: the ability to make promises, resist the bestial force of forgetfulness, and create a memory, particularly a memory of the will. All of this is essential for humans to become responsible creatures.

The means by which the morality of custom could establish a lasting memory involved a mnemonic strategy of cruelty. The debtor provides a commitment, guaranteeing the fulfillment of the promise. If the debtor fails to uphold the promise, the creditor possesses the authority to administer any desired punishment. The compensation received by the creditor serves as the outlet for the externalization of the cruelty that had previously been internalized when humans began to live in society. It is crucial to emphasize that no moral concept of guilt (Schuld) is involved in this process; rather, it revolves around the commercial concept of debt (Schulden).^[35] The initial interpretation of animal bad conscience (the feeling of uneasiness) centers on a feeling of indebtedness, initially to the community, then to the ancestors, and subsequently to the deified ancestors. Ultimately, the ascetic priest reinterpreted bad conscience as sin and guilt:

The main contrivance which the ascetic priest allowed himself to use in order to make the human soul resound with every kind of heart – rending and ecstatic music was – as everyone knows – his utilization of the feeling of guilt. The previous essay indicated the descent of this feeling briefly – as a piece of animal-psychology, no more: there we encountered the feeling of guilt in its raw state, as it were. Only in the hands of the priest, this real artist in feelings of guilt, did it take shape – and what a shape! “Sin” – for that is the name for the priestly reinterpretation of the animal “bad conscience” (cruelty turned back on itself) (GM III 20).

Nietzsche speculates that following forced socialization and the internalization of cruelty, a rudimentary form of a “commercial contract” regulated the interactions between individuals. When discussing the prehistoric era of humanity, it becomes apparent that this “contract” can be perceived as a form of reciprocal behavior that may precede the emergence of humans as a species. According to Nietzsche: “Our impulses and passions have been cultivated in social groups and strains for immense periods (formerly probably in groups of apes): so they are stronger as social impulses and passions than the individual ones even now” (Nachlass 1881, 11[130], KSA 9.487–8).^[36]

Therefore, much like Nietzsche metaphorically refers to the community created by “some pack of blond beasts of prey” as “the state” (GM II 17), the relationship between creditor and debtor, in its earliest stages, can be regarded as a primitive form of agreements, akin to what is presently termed in evolutionary biology as reciprocal altruism. In this scenario, an individual assists another with the expectation of future recompense, and those who break this “contract” are subject to punishment.^[37] Initially lacking any moral connotations, punishment is merely the exercise of externalized cruelty. The “free raider” is punished not because he is free and responsible for his actions. He simply violates the “contract,” and the creditor does not consider the potential motives or reasons behind his or her actions. The notions of free will and responsibility emerged much later, following the moralization of bad conscience. At this point, the pivotal link is between harm and suffering. Thus, punishment does not instill a bad conscience as a consciousness of guilt; the latter arises from the consequences of punishment on those who feel remorseful and perceive themselves as accountable for their own punishment.^[38] Therefore, the narrative framework of the genesis of conscience can be structured as follows:

1. The biological ancestors of humans were beasts of prey, living nomadically and forming small groups;

2. The socialization of these beasts of prey occurred through the domination of the weak by strong individuals. As a result, the externalization of aggressive drives was restrained, and these drives were directed inwards;

3. The internalization of cruelty created animal bad conscience (a feeling of uneasiness) and expanded the realm of the mental;

4. Individuals felt uneasiness as indebtedness to those members with whom they maintained reciprocal relationships;

5. Governed by the relationship between creditor and debtor, punishment ensured the cohesion of the community. The feeling of indebtedness between individuals was then transferred to the ancestors and later to divinity; and

6. The ascetic priest interpreted the feeling of indebtedness as sin and guilt. In the end, conscience emerged as an interior judge.

The moralization of bad conscience became possible due to the development of certain cognitive abilities. These abilities explain how the consciousness of one’s own states (Bewusstsein) enabled the emergence of conscience (Gewissen), specifically as consciousness of a feeling interpreted as guilt (Bewusstsein der Schuld) (GM II 4).

4

Humans domesticated themselves through the morality of custom and the reciprocal relationships they established. Eventually, they developed conscience and became responsible animals capable of making promises, keeping them, and being accountable if they failed to fulfill their promises. This achievement required the prior development of consciousness and the cognitive capacities involved in the execution and consequences of promising. In this last section, I delineate the abilities that Nietzsche refers to at the outset of the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality.

But how much this presupposes! In order to have this kind of command over the future in advance, man must first have learned to separate the necessary from the accidental occurrence, to think causally, to see and anticipate what is distant as if it were present, to fix with certainty what is end, what is means thereto, in general to be able to reckon, to calculate, – for this, man himself must first of all have become calculable, regular, necessary, in his own image of himself as well, in order to be able to vouch for himself as future, as one who promises does! (GM II 1).

In this passage, Nietzsche enumerates the cognitive skills essential for the development of conscience and responsibility: (a) episodic memory, which involves the capacity to remember and distinguish past, present, and future events;^[39] (b) theory of mind, which encompasses the ability to attribute intentional states to other individuals,^[40] along with knowledge of causal relations; (c) the capacity to predict actions; and (d) the ability to plan actions. Subsequently, I provide a comprehensive explanation of each of these essential cognitive skills.

(a) Since On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (1874), Nietzsche distinguishes humans from other animals by their possession of episodic memory: the power to conceive temporality, representing the past, present, and future. This distinction persists throughout his later philosophy. In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche describes the emergence of episodic memory as a counter-force capable of opposing the active force of forgetting. The ability to retain memories and situate them in the timeline is undoubtedly fundamental for the capacity to promise and the efficacy of punishment. Although nonhuman animals possess memory, it is generally short-term, and they lack an understanding of the three dimensions of time. According to Nietzsche, episodic memory is a skill that children develop in their early years as they discover the dimension of the past.^[41] In the case of primitive humans, the emergence of lasting memory was the result of the morality of custom and punishments, a mnemotechnics of cruelty. Punishment served as the instrument through which social rules were internalized, producing a “memory of the will” that involves not only remembering a promise but also a continued desire to fulfill it. Nietzsche asserts that the less individuals are able to retain communal obligations, the more severe the inflicted punishments become.

With the help of such images and processes one finally retains in memory five, six “I will nots,” in connection with which one has given one’s promise in order to live within the advantages of society, – and truly! with the help of this kind of memory one finally came “to reason”! (GM II 3).

The abilities of recognizing one’s own memories and understanding the dimensions of time also enable humans to engage in “mental time travels”: representing past events, differentiating them from the present, and imagining future ones. Therefore, mental time traveling is also presupposed in promises, as the act of promising obviously involves projecting into the future. Both the debtor and creditor enter into a contract because they share the capacity to remember the promise and project its fulfillment into the future.

(b) Associated with the ability to engage in “mental time travels,” the capacity for “reading minds” is a necessary condition for contractual relationships. As we have seen, consciousness is a result of social interactions. Fully developed humans are not only conscious of their own mental states but can also attribute mental states to others, an ability that contemporary psychologists refer to as “Theory of Mind” (ToM). Initially, for prudential reasons, humans analyze the behaviors of other individuals to assess if they pose a threat. Subsequently, humans imagine the kind of intentions that lie behind each behavior, based on the effects that these behaviors have on them:

What do we comprehend about our neighbor after all, other than his boundaries, I mean that by which he, as it were, inscribes himself in and impresses himself on us? We understand nothing of him except the alterations in us of which he is the cause […]. We ascribe to him the sensations that his actions evoked in us (D 118).

According to this view, we first analyze our mental state, and afterward, we attribute mental states to others: “In accordance with our knowledge of ourselves, we mold him into a satellite of our own system” (D 118). However, we must notice that the action of attributing mental states to others based on the representations that their behaviors cause in us presupposes, in turn, the idea of causality. The intellect has the ability to assign causality to what it represents as regular events: “Our intellect is a mirror – that evinces regularity, one particular thing follows each and every time upon another particular thing – we label that, if we perceive it and want to give it a name, cause and effect, we fools!” (D 121). Insofar as the representations have a determinate degree of magnitude or intensity, they can be brought to consciousness. Situated in a continuum, cause and effect are only an arbitrary attribution of a kind of relation between things that we can perceive in a complex process (D 112). Regularity, therefore, has more to do with the limits of our representation than with any supposed objectivity. This attributed regularity enables us to perceive constant patterns in human actions, thereby allowing us to ascribe fixed properties to other people.

How, in fact, do we respond to the behavior of a person in our vicinity? – First, we view it with an eye for what emerges from it for us – we see it only from this point of view. We take this effect to be the intention of the behavior-and finally we ascribe the possession of such intentions to the person as an abiding trait and from now on brand him as, for example, “an injurious person” (D 102).

(c) The regularity of actions is interpreted as causal events motivated by intentions. This implies predictability: the possibility of foreseeing future actions. The promise is made based on the presupposition, shared by the creditor and the debtor, that it will be fulfilled in the future, as long as the debtor is a reliable person. This reliability rests on attributing determinate properties to individuals and ensuring that the one who breaks the contract will be punished. Throughout the prehistoric period of the morality of custom, punishment and banishment of free riders gradually molded behaviors and produced the internalization of norms. Humans have domesticated themselves and ceased to be unpredictable animals: through cruel training, they became “reliable, regular, necessary” animals (GM II 1).

(d) Consciousness and theory of mind emerge within a social context. Their origins can be found in the prehistory of human beings as a species. Just as humans recognize mental states in other people based on the effects that the latter produce in them, the recognition of one’s mental states depends, to a large degree, on the behaviors one’s own actions cause in other people. It is then a two-way road. Such mental activities are already performed at the level of noetic consciousness, responsible for executing functions such as attention, working memory (short-term memory), inhibition of drives, and planning of actions. All of these abilities are already present, in prefigured form, in other animals, but they have become linguistically conscious in humans, something that has enabled them to make promises:

The animal understands all this just as well as the human being; it also develops self-control out of a nose for reality (prudence) […]. The animal judges the movements of its enemies and friends, it learns their particularities by heart, it takes appropriate measures: it renounces battle once and for all against individuals of a certain species and also divines in the approach of many types of animals a readiness for peace and accord (D 26).

Nietzsche’s exploration of cognitive capacities, therefore, illuminates the mechanisms that underlie human consciousness and the development of conscience. I have examined the remarkable abilities of humans: the capacity to store memories, discern patterns and causality, anticipate future events, and attribute mental states to our fellow beings. These cognitive faculties, as articulated by Nietzsche, form the bedrock upon which the intricate concepts that define our moral landscape are built. Conscience was the result of the long process of the morality of custom. However, it could only emerge because, in the process of internalizing aggressive drives, an inner world emerged and was gradually enriched with representations. Humans developed cognitive abilities and, driven by the need for communication, became self-conscious. With this rich inner world established, what began as the uncomfortable feeling of animal bad conscience transformed into the moral faculty of conscience, understood as the consciousness of guilt.