The European Disguises Himself in Morality

The “European disguises himself in morality because he has become sick, sickly crippled animal, who has good reasons for being ‘tame,’ because he is almost an abortion, an imperfect, weak and clumsy.” Amoral fierce beasts do not need any moral disguise, they simply act and recognize that it is their power, not their right that matters. It is the tame, the gregarious animal, the timid, mediocre modern human being that must “dress up” its mediocrity, anxiety, and ennui with morality. The mass of humanity, what Nietzsche calls “the herd,” legitimates and dramatizes its weakness and mediocrity through morality. Ultimately, morality has little to do with universal notions of right and wrong.

--John F. Welsh, Max Stirner's Dialectical Egoism: A New Interpretation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 238.