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Full Idea
One drives nature out of morality when one say "love your enemies": for then the natural "Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy" in the law (in instinct) has become meaningless.
Gist of Idea
'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy'
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §204)
Book Ref
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'The Will to Power', ed/tr. Kaufmann,W /Hollingdate,R [Vintage 1968], p.120
A Reaction
When the stoics said 'live according to nature' they meant according to reason, which presumably compromises with enemies. Profoundly Christian acts may be unnatural, but they are very moving.
| 6013 | Panaetius said we should live according to our natural starting-points [Panaetius, by Asmis] |
| 13318 | Nature doesn't give us virtue; we must unremittingly pursue it, as a training and an art [Seneca] |
| 13324 | Living contrary to nature is like rowing against the stream [Seneca] |
| 3069 | The art of life is more like the wrestler's than the dancer's [Aurelius] |
| 4856 | To live according to reason is to live according to the laws of human nature [Spinoza] |
| 4493 | Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? [Nietzsche] |
| 4494 | Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity [Nietzsche] |
| 4498 | 'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy' [Nietzsche] |