Nietzsche believed that the major moral concept of guilt, (accountability) had its origin in the very material concept of debt, and that “punishment, as requital, evolved quite independently of any presupposition concerning freedom or non-freedom of the will” (Genealogy of Morals, sections 4, page 63).
This is quite contrary to everything we have read about free will and determinism–i.e. that we are accountable for our actions only when we could have acted otherwise. Can these views be reconciled? What would it take for the libertarian idea of free will to be reconciled with the idea that morality developed from the more primitive relationship between debt and punishment? Would this theory fit into determinism or compatibility? Or would it be an entirely new explanation for ethics and morality?
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