The point is that an existence with some preference never met means that existence is not moral. Period. That’s if we believe that peoples preferences being met is the moral standard. — schopenhauer1
What is the moral thing to do? That’s easy. If one understands morality as a standard delimiting the way things ought to be , then in general terms the moral is
what satisfies that standard.In order for morality to work as a standard or principle , it cannot just refer to contingent , local and relative situation. The preferred standard, principle must point to a certain universality , or at least reliable ongoing identity in what it chooses.
For instance , if the notion of not-being born is conceived as a preferable alternative to life, then it is the moral choice because it is a universal. Not being born doesn’t change its stripes and become some sort of lived experience all of a sudden. It must be conceived
as pure and unchanging. It acts as a moral ground in a way similar not how God serves as the basis of all morality for the religious. In both cases there is an assumed unchanging fundamental truth to hang our moral standard on. We can rely on the never-having-been-born to always be devoid of suffering and pain, as well as joy. It is a perfect neutrality.
But I want to contrast this view of morality with the Nietzsche’s extra-moral perspective. For Nietzsche non-being and not-having-been-born are
themselves kinds of beings. For him a being is a difference in drives or affects. Never-having-been-born is not a pure neutrality that preceded life, it only exists or appears , that is , it is born as a contrast, a differentiation in one’s thinking, a desired remedy for one’s suffering, just as God serves this purpose for the religious.
Nietzsche calls this will to nothingness the acetic ideal, a drive or craving for perfect neutrality and the completely unchanging.
It has been said that the ‘nothing’ cannot be thought, but in thought is the only place it resides. And each time the ‘nothing’ is thought , it is thought differently , in response to always different concerns and contexts. The nothing is always fecund, creative rather than a simple lack or absence. Likewise , every time you come back to the topic of the never-having-been-born, you have something new to say about it. But this having something new to say isnt just dancing around the edges and pointing to the perfect, pure never changing affective neutrality of the nothing. You are each time slightly changing the very sense and meaning of the never-having-been-born in ways that are invisible to you.
Each time you talk or think about it , you are giving birth to new life and new sense.
But even though this is so, you consider it as static and fixed , and you also think of its contrary , life , in terms that are static and fixed For you life’s suffering has a non-changing essence, so for you morality is a battle between eternal suffering and eternal nothingness.
For Nietzsche the two sides of this battle are really the same concept, truth and morality as the unchanging , the pure, the perfect. Nietzsche wants to replace this traditional morality with an ethics that recognizes, celebrates and accelerates the incessant differentiating change underlying and overflowing your static notions of the nothing and of suffering.