Unconditional duties. – All persons who feel that they need the strongest words and sounds, the most eloquent gestures and postures, in order to be effective at all – revolutionary politicians, socialists, preachers of repentance with or without Christianity, all of whom refuse to accept semi-successes: they all speak of ‘duties’, and indeed always of duties with an unconditional character – without such duties they would have no right to their great pathos; they know that quite well! So they reach for moral philosophies that preach some categorical imperative, or they ingest a goodly piece of religion, as Mazzini4 did, for example. Because they want the unconditional confidence of others, they first need unconditional confidence in themselves on the basis of some ultimate, indisputable and inherently sublime commandment, and they want to feel like and pass themselves off as its servants and instruments. Here we have the most natural and usually very influential opponents of moral enlightenment and scepticism; but they are rare. On the other hand, a very comprehensive class of these opponents can be found wherever self-interest teaches submission while reputation and honour seem to prohibit it. Whoever feels his dignity violated by the thought of being the instrument of a prince or party or sect or even a financial power – say, as the descendant of an old, proud family – but still wants to or must be this instrument before himself and before the public, needs poignant principles that can be mouthed any time, principles of an unconditional ‘ought’ to which one may openly submit and be seen to have submitted without shame. All refined servility clings to the categorical imperative and is the mortal enemy of those who want to deprive duty of its unconditional character: that is what decency demands of them, and not only decency.