Money and Markets: Essays in Honor of Leland B. Yeager

118 Jürgen G. Backhaus1.To breed an animal which is able to make promise – is thatnot precisely the paradoxical task which nature hasset herself with regard to humankind? is it not the realproblem of humankind? . . . The fact that this problemhas been solved to a large degree must seem all themore surprising to the person who can fully appreciatethe opposing force, forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is notjust a vis inertiae, as superficial people believe, but israther an active ability to suppress, positive in thestrongest sense of the word, to which we owe the factthat what we simply live through, experience, take in,no more enters our consciousness during digestion(one could call it spiritual ingestion) than does thethousand-fold process which takes place with ourphysical consumption of food, our so-called ingestion.To shut the doors and windows of consciousness for awhile; not to be bothered by the noise and battle withwhich our underworld of serviceable organs workwith and against each other; a little peace, a littletabula rasa of consciousness to make room forsomething new, above all for the nobler functions andfunctionaries, for ruling, predicting, predetermining(our organism runs along oligarchic lines, you see) –that, as I said, is the benefit of active forgetfulness, likea doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest andetiquette: from which we can immediately see howthere could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope,pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness. The person inwhom this apparatus of suppression is damaged, sothat it stops working, can be compared (and not justcompared) – to a dyspeptic; he cannot “cope” withanything . . . And precisely this necessarily forgetfulanimal, in whom forgetting is a strength, representinga form of robust health, has bred for himself a counterdevice,memory, with the help of which forgetfulnesscan be suspended in certain cases, – namely in thosecases where a promise is to be made: consequently, itis by no means merely a passive inability to be rid ofan impression once it has made its impact, nor is it justindigestion caused by giving your word on someoccasion and finding you cannot cope, instead it is anactive desire not to let go, a desire to keep on desiringwhat has been, on some occasion, desired, really it isthe will’s memory: so that a world of strange new things,Here, we find the criticalissue of concludingcontracts, the basicnotion of a marketeconomy. Yet, this has tohold for the state as well.Nietzsche is concernedhere with the buildingblocks of society.This speaks directly toissues of property takenand contract nonperformance.Currently,in the German transitioneconomy, “forgetfulness”is a big item. Only in thiscontext can policies beplaced which withholdproperty from theirrightful owners andthereby bringunemployment upontheir dependents.The word of honorestablishes the contractand implies liability incase the promise isbroken. Althoughliability is not mentionedas such, Nietzscheexpresses the very ideaas “reliability.”