977853

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TCR0010.1177/1362480620977853Theoretical CriminologyRanasinghe

Article

Theoretical Criminology

Friedrich Nietzsche,
 ­
2022, Vol. 26(1) 75–90
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480620977853
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Prashan Ranasinghe
University of Ottawa, Canada

Abstract
The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche have much to offer criminology. To date, however,
his work has been largely neglected in this scholarship. Taking this lacuna seriously, this
article reads Nietzsche’s second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals and explicates its
importance to criminology. Specifically, focus is cast upon Nietzsche’s exposition of crime
and particularly punishment, pertaining to the production of a calculating and calculable
being upon whom pain and suffering can be inflicted and the ways that concerns over
excesses of punishment come to be framed as problematic. Via this reading, it is claimed
that On the Genealogy of Morals can serve, among others, as an important critique to many
of the presuppositions that ground the classical school of criminology, epitomized in the
work of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. The article concludes by locating the
importance of Nietzsche to penology specifically and criminology more broadly.

Keywords
Cesare Beccaria, classical school of criminology, crime and punishment, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Jeremy Bentham, justice, On the Genealogy of Morals, pain and suffering,
proportionality, rationality

Introduction
While Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings have been explored in relation to legal theory (e.g.
Goodrich and Valverde, 2005), they have received scant attention in criminology.1 This is
unfortunate because Nietzsche’s writings, specifically On the Genealogy of Morals

Corresponding author:
Prashan Ranasinghe, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, 120 University Street, Ottawa, ON
K1N 6N5, Canada.
Email: prashan.ranasinghe@uottawa.ca
76 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)

(1998/1887), are of immense value to situating and making sense of the intellectual history
that has shaped and grounded penal practices during the Enlightenment. As such, Nietzsche’s
writings help illuminate the political-religious-moral programme of penology and the far
from innocuous nature of the moral entrepreneurship that grounded penal reform.
Two important exceptions to the aforementioned lacuna, both of which have inspired
this article, deserve mention. Friedrich Balke’s (2003) essay on Nietzsche’s exposition of
the criminal as a dichotomization of the “exceptional” or “rare” criminal versus the
“pale” criminal permits readers to focus upon the remarkable resemblances between
Nietzsche and the school of positivist criminology (Lombroso, 1968/1899: 45–46,
2006/1876–1897; see also, Galton, 1909, 1978/1869). As well, George Pavlich’s (2009:
58, 65) exhortation for a new “vocabulary of crime and punishment” that “does not cling
to modern ‘grammars’ of critique”, is chiefly inspired by Nietzsche’s groundbreaking
polemic. While only passing mention is made of both articles, they unequivocally situate
the import of probing Nietzsche’s relevance and contribution to criminology.
This article explores On the Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche, 1998/1887)2 and articu-
lates its import to criminology, especially penology. As it will argue, this text is indispensa-
ble to understanding the history of the production of punishment as an important value to/
of society—what can be called a “value of values” (Acampora, 2019: 225; emphasis omit-
ted)—and the processes that undergird this production. Specifically, the article claims that
On the Genealogy of Morals can be read as a critique of, or even a corrective to, the myriad
presuppositions propounded by the classical school of criminology. While the heyday of
the classical school was more than 200 years ago, this does not mean that its ideas are anti-
quated. Rather, many of its key tenets are still of profound importance, best evinced, per-
haps, in the ways that many legal systems have incorporated them into their core values.3
Nietzsche’s discussion, which draws upon and gives primacy to genealogy (discussed in
the next section) aids in showing the problematic manner the classical school grounds its
beliefs. Nietzsche’s genealogical work helps illustrate that criminology (and penology
more specifically) keeps constantly and dogmatically returning to the works of the likes of
Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria without reflecting on their effects in cementing and
justifying penal regimes and particular practices of punishment. These figures were them-
selves moral entrepreneurs who, wittingly or not, promoted specific historical agendas and
programmes, some of which were far from innocuous, especially regarding alienation in
punishment. On the Genealogy of Morals, then, can serve as a new vocabulary (Pavlich,
2009: 58) that reveals the intellectual history of the production of the value of punishment
and is, thus, indispensable to criminology.
The article begins by situating On the Genealogy of Morals in its intellectual history.
The remainder of the article explicates Nietzsche’s discussion of punishment as a cri-
tique of the classical school and of criminology and penology more broadly.

On the Genealogy of Morals and intellectual history

On the Genealogy of Morals “is now recognized as a masterpiece” (Laforce, 2019: 292),
thought to be Nietzsche’s “most important and systematic work” and considered “one of
the key texts of European intellectual modernity” (Pearson, 2006: 16). The text directs
itself toward the normative practices of western morality which Nietzsche believed to be
Ranasinghe 77

akin to a hypnotic force (Hill, 2003: 226) imparting grave and offensive effects upon
humanity. For Nietzsche (1998/1887: 42), humans fail to understand that morality is
something that has been manufactured with specific, in fact, sinister, purposes in mind.
On the Genealogy of Morals, in other words, “starts from the premise that we are already
alienated from ourselves and we need a better understanding of our own past” (Laforce,
2019: 303; emphasis in original). “We remain unknown to ourselves” is how Nietzsche
(1998/1887: 3) puts it. As such, On the Genealogy of Morals can be read as “a critical
history” which “takes an unflinching look at the role of power, oppression, and violence
in [. . .] society” (Laforce, 2019: 301).
To illuminate the coerciveness of morality, Nietzsche employs genealogy to critique
what he sees as grossly erroneous examinations of the emergence of values. Among its
numerous criticisms, On the Genealogy of Morals directly targets both Kantian doctrine
and the “English Psychologists”. Kevin Hill (2003: 215) notes “Nietzsche’s complex
stance towards Kant” to capture the enormous debt Nietzsche owed to Kantian doctrine
and how much Kant influenced him. According to Hill (2003: 6; emphasis in original),
Nietzsche saw “Kant [a]s the philosopher with whom one must come to terms with”. At
the same time, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 4–5) also profoundly disagreed with and rejected
many of Kant’s ideas, especially the categorical imperative. Indeed, Hill (2003: 225;
emphasis added) notes that “Nietzsche’s respect for Kant drops precipitously” after On
the Genealogy of Morals and he “never tires of making the point that morality is anti-
life”. The “English Psychologists” were also severely criticized (Nietzsche, 1998/1887:
5–6, 11–14). This group included Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, David Hume, Charles
Darwin, Herbert Spencer and especially Paul Rée and John Stuart Mill (Pearson, 2006:
10; Prinz, 2016: 180–184). According to Hill (2003: ch. 7, n. 6), “the term ‘English’
should be taken loosely to mean something like utilitarian”, which includes the work of
Bentham—which Nietzsche was familiar with without directly reading, despite having
intentions to so do (Brobjer, 2008: 224; Prange, 2009: 81)—and Beccaria. Nietzsche
found the “internal coherence” (Anomaly, 2005: 1) of utilitarianism untenable, specifi-
cally, its foundational belief that the promotion of pleasure necessarily entails a reduction
of pain (Prange, 2009: 81).
Nietzsche’s primary criticism of Kantian doctrine and utilitarianism rests on their ahis-
torical foundations (Brobjer, 2004: 317–319). The “English Psychologists”, Nietzsche
(1998/1887: 12; emphasis omitted) writes, are bereft of “historical spirit”, and this reveals
an “amateurishness of their genealogy of morals”. It is to rectify this problem that Nietzsche
propounds the import of genealogy as a viable—indeed the only—form of inquiry. This
might appear strange given that Nietzsche has been accused of poor historical scholarship
and much of what he offered in On the Genealogy of Morals is said to be speculative (e.g.
Acampora, 2019; Janaway, 2006: 340; Laforce, 2019; Prinz, 2016), a point that Nietzsche
himself repeatedly underlines (e.g. Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 47, 64, 66).
While Nietzsche was a historian by training (he studied philology), his work is genea-
logical, not historical (see Brobjer, 2004; Janaway, 2006; Prinz, 2016). This does not
mean that his work is un or ahistorical. Detailed examinations of the collections in his
personal library, among others, reveal that Nietzsche was a “voracious reader” (Urs
Sommer, 2019: 29; see also Brobjer, 2004, 2008) and that he had “conducted extensive
historical and anthropological research at the time he wrote” On the Genealogy of Morals
78 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)

(Laforce, 2019: 308, n. 7). What is underlined here is that while there is an important
relation between history and genealogy, genealogy cannot and should not be simply
reduced to or conflated with history.
According to Michel Foucault (1977/1971), for example, Nietzschean genealogy is
historical but not necessarily concerned with origins, a point that Nietzsche (1998/1887:
4–5), who “did not glorify origins” (Guay, 2006: 358), is explicit about. Accordingly,
meticulous historical detail is brought about via the patient gathering of knowledge,
which, however, is used not to chart origins via reductive readings but, rather, to work
through and with discontinuities (Foucault, 1977/1971: 139–140; see also Pippin, 2006:
383; Prinz, 2016: 191).4 In other words, “what is distinctive about Nietzsche’s enter-
prise” is that his “genealogy is a new method of applying historical investigation to
philosophical concerns” (Hill, 2003: 203), in this case attending to the fundamental ques-
tion about being and becoming: “‘How did I come to feel and think in these ways of
mine’” (Janaway, 2006: 347; emphasis in original)? Thus, as Hill explicates, genealogy
is unconcerned with teleology—one reason Nietzsche disagrees with Kant—but rather
“adopts a German historicist view” where “Each cross section of history has its own
autonomous structures, meanings, and values” (Hill, 2003: 204), and it is these that
Nietzsche unearths. Jesse Prinz (2016: 194) further articulates the difference between
history and genealogy noting that Nietzsche:

is clearly not engaging in what historians do: piecing together a carefully documented
account of who did what to whom and when [. . . and instead his work] suggest[s] [. . .] a
kind of rhetorical flourish consonant with the historicizing tendencies of nineteenth-century
German thought.

Rather than origins, then, Nietzsche is concerned with processes (see Guay, 2006: 356;
Hill, 2003: 205). This approach involves abstractions (Guay, 2006: 358). Accordingly,
Nietzsche “ventures his best guesses” and “does not hesitate to go out on a limb”
(Schacht, 2006: 130) because he “prefer[s] to look for the bigger picture” (Urs Sommer,
2019: 41). Therefore, despite the vast amount of historical material at his disposal, only
small amounts make their way into the text. Most importantly, as Foucault (1977/1971)
explicates, genealogy is not simply concerned with the past but draws upon it—via cross
sections, abstractions and so on—to “set [. . .] prospects for the future” (Acampora,
2019: 224; see also Guay, 2006: 362). Thus, if Nietzsche’s programme is to be fruitfully
understood and made sense of, it is important to recognize that Nietzsche’s enterprise is
genealogical and philosophical, rather than historical.

Promise, memory and calculation: Pain and the production

of responsibility
Nietzsche poses a simple question to begin his exposition: where does the ability to make
and keep promises come from? This is a particularly germane question given man’s natu-
ral inclination to forget.5 In fact, for Nietzsche (1998/1887: 39), forgetfulness is benefi-
cial: “making room for the new, making room above all for the superior functions and
functionaries—those governing, anticipating, planning ahead [. . .] such is the use of
Ranasinghe 79

[. . .] active forgetfulness”. This active forgetfulness has a “function [that] resembles that
of a concierge preserving mental order, calm, and decorum” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 39).
If forgetting is advantageous, then, anything which stifles it is deeply inimical to well-
being. Nietzsche (1998/1887: 40) writes of the manufacturing of “a counter-faculty [of
forgetfulness], a memory” where “forgetfulness is in certain cases suspended—that is,
those which involve promising”. The production of a memory is not accidental; it is will-
ful and far from innocuous. Thus, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 40; emphasis in original) states
that this suspension “represents [. . .] an active will not to let go, an ongoing willing of
what was once willed, a real memory of the will”.
Something significant, Nietzsche claims, happens when man is made—forced, in
fact—to remember. Memory is a product of a specific breeding to make man social.
Natural instincts are tamed and what is produced is “sociable” and “civilized”. Man is
now capable of making and keeping a promise: he can now be counted upon. Man can be
counted upon because he is (and made to be) a calculating and calculable being able “to
dispose of the future in advance” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 40). In other words, memory
allows man to bring under control linear time (time of the clock) and temporality (man’s
relation to linear time), important aspects of being (see Heidegger, 1962/1927; Ranasinghe,
2020a, 2020b). If time can be colonized and controlled, then, it is man who is in control
over his life or, so he believes. This means, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 40) says, that man must
be bred—and learn—to “reckon and calculate”! The words reckon and calculate—par-
ticularly calculate—speak to a determining that takes place. To calculate means to deter-
mine via the numeric form. However, it is the fact that one determines through specific
thinking and reflecting that is crucial. Man is now a thinking animal—already on his way
to domestication and socialization—so that the very act of calculating removes him fur-
ther from his natural instincts (where presumably he acts first and then thinks, if he even
thinks) and brings him closer to a social being, culminating in “the ‘dis-animalization’ of
humanity” (Schacht, 2006: 122). Thus, Nietzsche writes (laments, it appears), “how much
man himself must have become calculable, regular, necessary, even to his own mind, so
that finally he would be able to vouch for himself as future, in the way that someone mak-
ing a promise does” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 40; emphasis in original)!
Two important matters from this complex summation of Nietzsche’s key ideas need
highlighting. First, man becomes a calculating being. Second, and relatedly, this also
means that man is a calculable being. If man is capable of calculating—and determining
his future—then he can also be calculated. That is, he could also, now, be determined. In
calculating, man becomes, as Nietzsche (1998/1887: 40) says, “regular”, by which he
means that man becomes “normal” or “normalized”—essentially turned into an average-
type (Durkheim, 1982/1895: 85–107). Man’s every move (or most of it) can now be
known and foreseen. Thus, while man’s ability to calculate makes him like others, this
very likeness emerges because man can also be calculated upon and determined. In other
words, in calculating man, he can be normalized and made regular. This, however, first
necessitates that man brings himself under that very power of normalization. It is at this
point that man can vouch to himself and others that he can be counted upon in the future.
That man can be counted upon, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 40) claims, gives rise to the
concept of responsibility. Nietzsche (1998/1887: 40; emphasis in original) writes that
“the task of breeding an animal which is entitled to make promises presupposes as its
80 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)

condition a more immediate task, that of first making man to a certain extent necessary,
uniform, an equal among equals, regular and consequently, calculable”. This breeding is
a product of what Nietzsche (1998/1887: 40) describes as an “enormous labour” steeped
in “a certain odour of blood and torture” that he refers to as the “‘morality of custom’”.
The morality of custom refers to “the special work of man on himself throughout the
longest era of the human race”, a “social strait-jacket” where “man was really made cal-
culable” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 40; emphasis added).
The morality of custom and the emergence of society serve an essential purpose as man
sees and desires: to produce “the sovereign individual, the individual who resembles no
one but himself” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 41; emphasis in original). Man now becomes free,
and it is this man, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 41; emphasis in original) says, that is capable, but
more importantly, “entitled[,] to make promises”. The entitlement to promise refers to the
man who can now be trusted—his word carries weight because its utterances will bear fruit
(Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 41) at some future, undetermined, point. Thus, an indeterminate
future can be colonized, and thus controlled, because man, given that he is both calculating
and calculable, is determinable and thus can be determined. This is the man “who gives his
word as something which can be relied on” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 41). It is this man,
Nietzsche (1998/1887: 41; emphasis in original) says, who has the “special consciousness
of power and freedom, a feeling of the ultimate completion of man”, and it is this man who
is “liberated” and a “master of free will”. Nietzsche (1998/1887: 41; emphasis in original)
describes the significance of this man’s life as such: “The proud knowledge of this extraor-
dinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over
oneself and over fate has sunk down into his innermost depths and has become [. . .] a
dominant instinct”. This dominant instinct of man, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 42) calls con-
science. The conscience that man has bred for himself is predicated upon his determinabil-
ity—that he is both calculating and calculable.
The calculating and calculable man, that is, a man who has a memory forged in him
and thus can make and keep promises, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 42; emphasis in original)
claims, “is the product of a long history and series of transformations” that have grave
costs: “there is, perhaps, nothing more frightening and more sinister in the whole prehis-
tory of man than his technique for remembering things”. This is because “the most pow-
erful aid to memory was pain” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 43; emphasis added). Nietzsche
(1998/1887: 42) writes that: “Things never proceeded without blood, torture, and vic-
tims, when man thought it necessary to forge a memory for himself ”.
In underlining the connection between pain and memory, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 43)
reminds readers that:

The worse mankind’s memory was, the more frightening its customs appear; the harshness of
punishment codes, in particular, gives a measure of how much effort it required to triumph over
forgetfulness and to make these ephemeral slaves of emotion and desire mindful of a few
primitive requirements of social cohabitation.

Thus, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 43; emphasis in original) continues, via (the threat of) pain,
“one eventually memorizes five or six ‘I will not’s[’], thus giving one’s promise in return
for the advantages offered by society”. The effect of this programme of pain and
Ranasinghe 81

suffering, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 44) says, is that man becomes capable of reasoning and
reasonable by gaining “mastery over the emotions”. It is the reasoning and reasonable
man—reasoning because he can calculate and calculating because he is reasonable—that
is a product of violence and pain: “how much blood and horror is at the bottom of all
‘good things’”, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 44; emphasis omitted) reminds readers.

Rereading classical criminology and the rational actor

Nietzsche’s discussion of the responsibilization of man through pain and suffering helps
situate the rational actor which the classical school takes as a basis for understanding
crime and punishment. Classical criminology, recall, presupposes that crime is a product
of agency and that actors engage in a cost–benefit analysis prior to deciding whether or
whether not to act. While this point need not be labored, it is worth noting that Bentham’s
(1970/1789: 179; emphasis omitted) first rule of punishment—which sets the foundation
for the other rules (primary, secondary and rules concerning disposition)—is grounded in
the cost–benefit analysis: “The value of the punishment must not be less in any case than
what is sufficient to outweigh that of the profit of the offence”. Beccaria’s (1986/1764:
14) rule concerning proportionality underlines the same point: “the inclination to crime
grows in proportion to the advantage that each person finds in the disorders themselves”
and, therefore, “the obstacles that restrain men from committing crimes should be
stronger according to the degree that such misdeeds are contrary to the public good”.
Beccaria’s and Bentham’s writings on crime and punishment explicate and justify the
import of pain and suffering to combatting crime. In their view, pain and suffering are a
means to an end, the well-being of society. Nietzsche, too, is directly concerned with the
place of pain as a means for the formation of society. Unlike Beccaria and Bentham,
however, Nietzsche’s exposition of crime and punishment is not necessarily concerned
with justice; it lacks the normative bent—certainly in degree—that grounds Bentham’s
and particularly Beccaria’s writings, evident especially in Beccaria’s efforts to circum-
scribe the quantity of pain administered as punishment. Yet, the contribution that
Nietzsche provides for intellectual inquiry broadly and criminology specifically lies in
his analysis of the conditions upon which society would, and could, come to implement
pain and suffering as a solution to arresting specific problems.
For Beccaria and Bentham, pain and suffering become the means to convince the
rational actor that s/he ought to comport him/herself in a particular manner, lest the
strong-arm of the law and its tools of violence be deployed upon him/her. Nietzsche’s
discussion, by contrast, highlights that the rational actor (that classical criminology lauds
and presupposes), is far from a natural product but a socialized artifact produced and
forged via the significant spillage of blood and other means of torture. Thus, On the
Genealogy of Morals ought to be read as a genealogy of the production of the conditions
upon which punishment is rendered not just effective and efficient, but also feasible to
begin with. The classical school takes for granted the production of the very conditions
that make punishment possible because it is largely uninterested in the bloody and messy
work that needed to be carried out for this. To put this differently, Nietzsche explains
how the rational actor came into being—the harnessing of humanity’s rationality. Equally
important, Nietzsche shows how the rational actor becomes cemented as a calculable
82 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)

being whose future can be colonized, that is, planned and managed. This actor who plans
the future, a being that classical criminology heavily relies upon to address crime, is, as
Nietzsche shows, far from natural or even an accidental by-product. Rather, a programme
of pain and suffering, even torture, lays at the very heart of the production of this being.
This programme, as Nietzsche shows, is couched in a moral discourse in order to extri-
cate it from its bloody history.
Nietzsche’s discussion of pain and suffering illuminates two significant things. First,
he suggests that punishment is important to harnessing the rationality (and, even free-
dom) of humanity; that is, humanity’s rationality cannot be extricated from the frame-
work of pain and suffering, formalized via punishment. Second, and relatedly, his work
attests that punishment functions as a “political anatomy”, a “‘mechanics of power’”
(Foucault, 1995/1977: 138). Punishment, in other words, is not merely a specific response
to crime. It can also be thought of as producing what Foucault (1995/1977: 135–169)—
inspired by Nietzsche—calls “docile bodies”. Foucault (1995/1977: 136) describes how
humans are turned into governable subjects through “projects of docility” which were
specifically designed to imprint upon individuals the mandate of the state. In other words,
and to return to Nietzsche, it is only possible to create docile beings because actors are
rational, but this rationality is produced and harnessed via pain, which punishment for-
malizes under a moral code.
As the foregoing shows, Nietzsche provides important bases upon which the views of
classical criminology can be critiqued and made sense of. As the next section demon-
strates, Nietzsche argues that it is erroneous to think and speak of punishment in broad
terms. Rather, he claims that it is only possible to think about various stages of punish-
ment across time to understand its essence. This line of thinking also provides important
contributions to criminology in its inherent critique of the notion of proportionality
between crime and punishment that is a hallmark not just of classical criminology, but
the legal system in general.

The precision in/of punishment

The explication of the production of the conscience serves as a foray for Nietzsche to
discuss the forging of the exactness of punishment. He asks, thus: “how [. . .] did that
other ‘murky affair’, the sense of guilt, the whole matter of ‘bad conscience’, originate”
(Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 44)? By the exactness of punishment Nietzsche refers to the
precision in the quantity of punishment that is calibrated to the amount of harm said to
be caused by crime. Nietzsche (1998/1887: 44) states that this exactness emerges at a
specific moment in time and in a specific relationship: “the central moral concept of
‘guilt’ originated from the very material concept of ‘debt’”. That is, the specific relation-
ship between the debtor and creditor is what sowed the specifics of punishment. Thus,
Nietzsche (1998/1887: 45; emphasis in original) writes, “this idea of the equivalence
between damage and pain” emerges “from the contractual relationship between the cred-
itor and debtor, which is as old as the concept ‘legal subjects’ itself and which points
back in turn to the fundamental forms of buying, selling, exchange, wheeling and deal-
ing”. The exactness of buying and selling (e.g. $10 for a pound of venison, where the
Ranasinghe 83

obligations of each party are precise and unequivocal) sets the stage for what is termed
the proportionality between crime and punishment.
In the debtor–creditor relationship, specifically in the precision that comes from
measurement, Nietzsche asserts, thinking is born or, at least, sustained. These ways of
thinking (precision) and doing (measurement) become extended upon all terrains of life.
It is here, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 51; emphasis in original) claims, “that man first encoun-
tered another, here that one man first measured himself against another”. At this point,
“man designated himself as the being who estimates values, who evaluates and meas-
ures, as the ‘measuring animal’” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 51; emphasis in original). It is
this measuring principle that is translated into punishment because it follows the simple
dictum that “‘Everything has its price; everything can be paid off’” (Nietzsche,
1998/1887: 52; emphasis in original). Crime and the accompanying harm—breaching
law, specifically the pledge made to the community—according to such logic, can, and
therefore, must, be precisely accounted for and attended to (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 53).
This is how Nietzsche conceptualizes the emergence of punishment with measurement,
emblematic in the debtor–creditor relation.
According to Nietzsche (1998/1887: 52), the community’s relationship with its mem-
bers is akin to that between the creditor (the community) and debtor (members of the
community). This relationship arises from a pledge made between the members of the
community to the community (an abstract but nonetheless particular entity). Alluding to
the precepts of the social contract (e.g. Hobbes, 1985/1651), Nietzsche (1998/1887: 52;
emphasis in original) writes that “the criminal is above all [. . .] someone who breaks a
contractual commitment [. . .] towards the whole community”. Thus,

The criminal is a debtor who not only fails to repay the advantages and advances offered to him
but even attacks his creditors, and for that reason he is from that point on not only, as is just,
denied all these goods and advantages—he is also reminded of what these goods represent.

(Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 52; emphasis in original)

Where the pledge is broken, “The community, the deceived creditor, will see that it
receives payment, in so far as it can” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 52).
Importantly for Nietzsche, the exactness of punishment is a recent transformation:
“Throughout the longest period of human history, punishment was not exacted because
the trouble-maker was held responsible for his action, that is, it was not exacted on the
assumption that only the guilty man was to be punished” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 44–45;
emphasis in original). Rather, Nietzsche says, in analogizing punishment to the role of a
parent who disciplines his/her child(ren), what was happening was that the creditor
wished to impose harm—for its own sake—upon the debtor. The infliction of harm or
pain was the end; it did not function, as it would later, as a means to an end:

The equivalence [between damage caused by a failure to repay the debt and the pain to be
inflicted as a result] is established by the fact that, instead of a direct compensation for the
damage done (i.e. instead of money, land, possessions of whatever sort), a sort of pleasure is
conceded to the creditor as a form of repayment and recompense—the pleasure of being able
84 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)

to vent his power without a second thought on someone who is powerless [. . .], the pleasure
of violation.

(Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 46; emphasis in original)

That is, and as Nietzsche (1998/1887: 46; emphasis added) adds, “this compensation
consists in an entitlement and right to cruelty”. Thus, “The direct harm caused [by the
criminal] is the least matter of concern here” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 52). This is signifi-
cant because, for Nietzsche, while the harm is important and the basis upon which the
community intervenes, it is not necessarily offsetting or seeking to aright this harm that
is key. For Nietzsche (1998/1887: 53), harm is the basis upon which the creditor obtains
pleasure, and

“punishment” is simply the image [. . .] of normal behaviour towards a hated enemy, who lies
prostrate and defenceless, bereft not only of every right and protection, but also of all hope of
grace. Punishment is, then, the prerogative of the victor and celebration [. . .] in all its
ruthlessness and cruelty.

While polemical, there is, nevertheless, something important here: punishment (the
implementation of a specific ilk of pain, that is, horror and cruelty, pain that is excessive
in form and substance) is normal, even innate, to humanity. Punishment, in other words,
reflects what it means to be human. In fact, for Nietzsche, punishment is a celebration of
humanity—a celebration of what it means to be human—and this pertains both to view-
ing and participating in the infliction of pain and suffering. Thus, the community, which
is owed a repayment, releases its fury and hostility—natural, innate, traits—upon the
criminal (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 52–53) and, in so doing, enjoys the infliction of this
pain. The infliction of pain, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 47; emphasis in original) writes,
“occasions the greatest pleasure”, so much, in fact, that it is described as “extraordinary”,
and tied directly to a festivity: “to inflict pain—an actual festivity”. The “joys of cruelty”
as Nietzsche (1998/1887: 50, 47) says, “constituted the great festivity and pleasure of
mankind in earlier days” (see also Schacht, 2006: 129). Thus, the community is fulfilled
by, and through, the pain it inflicts, and the enjoyment caused by the infliction of pain
serves as the repayment for the harm incurred.6
Nietzsche (1998/1887: 48) reminds readers that “in the days before mankind grew
ashamed of its cruelty, before pessimists existed, life on earth was more cheerful”. Despite
the decline of violence—and cruelty, torture and torment—life, according to Nietzsche, is
not necessarily better, in fact, far from it. This impoverished life is a product of the imple-
mentation of artificiality upon man’s natural state that emerged with “the growth of the
shame of man before man” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 48; emphasis in original). Thus, accord-
ing to Nietzsche (1998/1887: 48), cruelty and pain are not to be shunned; they are to be
celebrated because one cannot be human without cruelty and torture: “To witness suffering
does one good, to inflict it even more so—that is a harsh proposition, but a fundamental
one, an old, powerful, human all-too-human proposition”.
For Nietzsche, what changed over time is that the amount of pain inflicted was
questioned. That is, it was not pain or suffering that was necessarily thought of as
problematic. Rather, it was excessive, and thus unnecessary, pain and suffering that
Ranasinghe 85

was questioned. Thus, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 49; emphasis added) claims that: “The
aspect of suffering which actually causes outrage is not suffering itself, but the mean-
inglessness of suffering”. Specifically, as will become apparent, the concern over
excessive punishment—contravening precision and proportionality—begins to
emerge, yet again, from the debtor–creditor relationship, when the amount of suffering
administered underwent profound contemplation and reflection.
Nietzsche’s exposition of the precision of punishment focuses on two issues: first, the
exact amount of punishment administered given the harm occasioned by the crime; second,
and related, the administration of excessive and thus unnecessary pain. It is clear that these
are of significant concern to the classical school, the first pertaining to what is called pro-
portionality between crime and punishment, the second, abuses of power and authority
evinced in unnecessary punishment both in form and substance (the latter said to be cir-
cumvented or at least ameliorated via proportionality). The import of proportionality to
classical criminology need not be laboured here, though it is worth underlining, even in
passing, that despite some significant differences that underpin each of Beccaria’s and
Bentham’s positions on punishment—both conceptual and logistical—they are unequivo-
cal that proportionality ought to ground the administration of punishment (see Beccaria,
1986/1764: 14; Bentham, 1962/1830: 400–408, 1970/1789: 170–182, 189–192).
While both Bentham and Beccaria excoriated the rampant practice of excessive and
unnecessary punishment—best evinced in the denunciation of capital punishment
(Beccaria, 1986/1764: 48; Bentham, 1962/1830: 441–450)—it was primarily Beccaria
who threaded his treatise around justice. Thus, Beccaria (1986/1764: 3) underlines that
“laws, which are or ought to be agreements among free men, usually have been the
instrument of passions of a few persons”, and then places strict limits on the amount of
punishment that can be justifiably imposed, including the explicit denunciation of torture
and torment (Beccaria, 1986/1764: 23). The last sentence of his treatise, which notes the
necessary conditions—for example, proportionality, celerity, publicity of law and so
on—to ensure that “punishment should not be an act of violence” (Beccaria, 1986/1764:
81; emphasis added), aptly illuminates this.
Nietzsche’s belief that (excessive) pain is not simply productive but innate to human-
ity, and the joy occasioned in its application, highlights yet another important point of
departure with Beccaria and Bentham. Above all, his exposition of excessive pain and its
place in the human conscience and consciousness can be read as a polemic against the
type of thinking that grounds classical criminology.
According to Nietzsche (1998/1887: 58), it is a mistake to claim that the origins of
punishment were “invented specifically for the purposes of punishing” because the
essence of punishment is not static but in flux. Nietzsche (1998/1887: 60) distinguishes
between the “enduring” aspect of punishment (customs, drama, procedural rules, etc.)
and the “fluid” aspect of punishment (meanings, aims and expectations). Specifically,
with regards to punishment’s fluid nature, Nietzsche (1998/1887: 60; emphasis in orig-
inal) writes:

the concept of “punishment” [. . .] no longer possesses a single meaning, but a whole synthesis
of “meanings”. The whole history of punishment up to this point, the history of its exploitation
to the most diverse ends, finally crystallizes in a sort of unity which is difficult to unravel,
86 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)

difficult to analyse, and [. . .] completely beyond definition. (Nowadays it is impossible to say

why people are punished: all concepts in which a whole process is summarized in signs escape
definition; only that which is without history can be defined).

The importance of what Nietzsche claims should not be minimized. It is from such a
foundation that he can claim that, that which is historical (which is everything) cannot
be explained reductively: punishment, then, cannot be said to contain a singular
meaning. Such a reductive reasoning encapsulates the normative programme of the
classical school, certainly of Beccaria’s (this was, recall, one of Nietzsche’s major
concerns with utilitarianism). Thus, when Beccaria (1986/1764: 8, 23) claims that the
excesses of punishment are to be determined based upon the amount of punishment
deemed necessary, the necessity in question is derived vis-a-vis deterrence. Yet, that
deterrence ought to be the sole purpose of punishment is based upon an a priori—and
perhaps ahistorical—conceptualization that punishment is and ought to be about one
thing, a reduction that is largely driven by the desire to eradicate problems of injus-
tice. Such a desire, as Nietzsche’s text illuminates, is grounded by its own moral code,
which ought to be critically assessed rather than simply presupposed for its rightness
and goodness.
Thus, while a moral and normative programme grounds classical criminology, the
fact that it commences from suppositions, Nietzsche would argue, is gravely problem-
atic to its internal coherence.7 The concern over the excesses of punishment illumi-
nates this well. Beccaria criticizes the excesses of punishment as a matter of justice.
Yet, Nietzsche’s reading of punishment suggests that punishment (even its supposed
excesses), and the joys that accompany it, are natural to humanity and should be treated
as such. To claim that pain and suffering are natural to humanity is certainly peculiar,
perhaps even dangerous, but this peculiarity is a product of the very fact that humanity
has been conditioned against its own being, its own innate nature. In other words, the
very fact that such a claim is said to be peculiar, Nietzsche’s writings show, is itself the
necessary evidence to underline that humanity has lost its way, that morality is anti-life
(Hill, 2003: 225). A Nietzschean critique of the normative programme of the classical
school, then, concerns not simply that the limit placed upon the infliction of pain is
artificial, but and more importantly, that the process by which this position is reached
is based on the need to erroneously reduce the purpose of punishment to an overarch-
ing ethos, which history does not—and cannot—countenance. Reading Nietzsche’s
second essay as such reveals the specific moral agendas that these reforms and their
reformers are inextricably linked to and the multiversity of penal motivations that have
grounded and continue to ground punishment.

Conclusion
Nietzsche’s second essay in On the Genealogy of Morals makes two related contribu-
tions to criminology concerning the place of pain and suffering to punishment. First,
that the rational actor who calculates benefits vis-a-vis costs prior to (not) acting—an
important presupposition which founds the classical school, and legal systems gener-
ally—is manufactured through the conscious and explicit infliction of pain and
Ranasinghe 87

suffering. The rational actor is neither natural nor accidental but has been contrived via
a history of violence that has forged—willed, as Nietzsche says—such a being into
existence. This forging is made possible by harnessing rationality through pain.
Humanity’s rationality, then, as Nietzsche’s work shows, cannot be extricated from its
history pain and suffering.
Second, and relatedly, Nietzsche’s discussion shows that the desire to rein in exces-
sive pain and suffering—that classical criminology made a hallmark of its normative
programme—is problematic to the well-being of humanity. This is because the concern
over excessiveness itself had to be forged given humanity’s natural disposition toward
violence, which is aptly seen in the infliction of pain and suffering for/as celebration.
More importantly, the premise which underpins the drive to minimize pain, Nietzsche
argues, is faulty. The ahistorical nature of this premise—a significant reason Nietzsche
finds many of the tenets of utilitarianism and Kantian doctrine problematic—leads him
to claim that the essence of punishment is bereft of monolithic meaning and purpose, and
thus, extending this argument, setting a quantity of punishment based upon the principle
of deterrence is aporetic. The history of punishment, then, for Nietzsche, cannot be
reduced to one thing and thought of broadly. Rather, one is forced to and can only speak
of specific epochs or phases where punishment was said—and meant—to do specific
things (the cross-sections of history Nietzsche utilizes). The most significant point that
emerges from Nietzsche’s exposition of (excessive) pain and suffering, then, is the
absurdity of speaking in broad and reductive language.
This article has explored how Nietzsche’s discussion of punishment can be invoked to
critique many of the hallowed premises of the classical school. Nietzsche’s relevance and
importance, however, are not confined to shining light upon this alone (or the similarities
to positivist criminology, as Balke’s (2003) essay helps readers see). Rather, his work
also serves as an invaluable tool to further explore many of the presuppositions about
crime, criminality and punishment. Consider, as an example, Hill’s (2003: ch. 7, n. 18)
passing comment: given Nietzsche’s work, “The very idea of a victimless crime has
become dubious”, he claims, because if bad conscience “derives from introjected aggres-
sion”, then, any limit upon the human will, choice or action, is, itself, an evil. Extending
this argument further, the very notion of crime is, discursively, already, an evil upon
humanity, even before a violation of a precept occurs. That is, the category called crime,
as something manufactured, is a product of the inward turning of hate upon the self.
These statements are polemical, possibly “disturbing” as Pavlich (2009: 62) says, but
they undoubtedly provide fertile ground for theoretical reflection because of Nietzsche’s
“flashes of brilliance” (Pavlich, 2009: 62).
As well, On the Genealogy of Morals provides insights concerning the deep-seated
pessimism, even hatred, toward institutionalized punishment practices in vogue pres-
ently, specifically regarding the purposes of these institutions. The text may also help us
to understand the growing trend of revenge and vengeance found in virtual outlets such
as social media, which perhaps might illuminate the innate nature of cruelty in humanity
(evinced, rather interestingly, in both formalized and informal forms of punishment).
Nietzsche’s work, then, long overlooked by criminologists, offers novel, imaginative,
ways of rethinking crime and punishment both in terms of situating what has transpired
and making sense of what is transpiring.
88 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)

Acknowledgements
This article has benefitted enormously from the invaluable comments and suggestions received by
four reviewers. The author is also grateful to Professors Bosworth and Cole for their guidance and
help throughout this process. The usual disclaimers apply.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD
Prashan Ranasinghe https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0219-5000

Notes
1. Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology (Hayward et al., 2010), for example, contains entries on
Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, Cesare Lombroso, Emile Durkheim and Michel Foucault,
but not on Nietzsche. There is a solitary, passing, mention of Nietzsche under the entry on
Foucault (Hayward et al., 2010: 162).
2. This text consists of three, somewhat related, essays. This article draws specifically from the
second, entitled “‘Guilt’, ‘bad conscience’, and related matters”.
3. The classical school claims that humans are rational and weigh the benefits of committing a
crime against the costs associated with getting caught and punished prior to acting. As such,
agency is presupposed. The calibration of punishment to the harm occasioned by the crime, so
that the costs are greater than the rewards, is said to be paramount to combatting crime (e.g.
White et al., 2013: 24–42; Williams and McShane, 2014: 14–26). Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy
Bentham, as is well known, are considered the two key thinkers of this school.
4. It is impossible to do justice to the import of Foucault’s essay in this space. It is correctly
claimed that Foucault was greatly inspired and influenced by Nietzsche’s revisionist
(approach to) penology and that Discipline and Punish (Foucault, 1995/1977) pays homage
to Nietzschean genealogy even though Nietzsche is not referred to even once in the text; there
is, however, explicit mention of genealogy (e.g. Foucault, 1995/1977: 23, 29, 193). What is
claimed here is that the groundwork for the form of Discipline and Punish was already laid
in this essay (Foucault, 1977/1971) and if there is any doubt that Nietzsche’s genealogy influ-
enced and guided Foucault, attention should be directed to it.
5. The masculine noun and pronoun have not been altered to reflect Nietzsche’s writing (style)
and the time in which he penned his thoughts.
6. While Nietzsche distances himself from Kant’s theory of retribution, this is not because
Nietzsche was repulsed by (excessive) pain or cruelty, but because, as stated earlier, he funda-
mentally disagreed with the form of Kant’s reasoning, best evinced, perhaps, in his claim that
“the categorical imperative gives off a whiff of cruelty” (Nietzsche, 1998/1887: 47; see also
De Ville, 2020: 102 for further discussion).
7. It is worth noting that while Bentham credited Beccaria with the inspiration for his “moral
arithmetic”, he also described Beccaria’s writings as “laden with confusion and bad meta-
physics” (see Hart, 1982: 40, 49).

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Author biography
Prashan Ranasinghe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, University of
Ottawa. His first book, Helter-Shelter: Security, Legality and an Ethic of Care in an Emergency
Shelter, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2017. His research interests are in the
sociology of law, the intellectual history of criminology as well as social theory. He is currently
working on a project related to nothingness and being.