But the strange fact is
that everything there is, or was,
of freedom, subtlety, boldness, dance,
or masterly assurance on earth,
whether in thinking itself, or in ruling,
or in speaking and persuading,
in artistic just as in ethical practices,
has only developed
by virtue of

the “tyranny of such arbitrary laws.”

And, in all seriousness,
it is not at all improbable that this
is what is “nature”
and “natural”
– and not that laisser-aller!*

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Butler, aphorism 188

*Letting go

As I continue to read from Beyond Good and Evil this passage impresses me as a Nietzsche contra Trump and the Supreme Court statement.

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a ruling that the President is immune from prosecution for most of his official duties. This is what the New York Times had to say today:

The majority opinion, which [Chief Justice] Roberts wrote, does just that. It says presidents must be able to make difficult decisions without worrying that someday they could be criminally punished for their choices. “A president inclined to take one course of action based on the public interest may instead opt for another, apprehensive that criminal penalties may befall him upon his departure from office,” Roberts wrote.

Some legal scholars believe the decision goes too far in expanding presidential power. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the ruling would enable presidents to do things that, before now, might have seemed clearly outside the law. “Orders the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune,” she wrote. “Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”  – The New York Times

The lines penned by Nietzsche observes that the constraint of laws, or of the principles of conscience, or of the rules of grammar, or of the propriety of good table manners, etc., etc., are essential, are productive for the arc of development.

Nothing is excluded, or “above the law” because this is the way of nature, indeed, is what we mean by Nature.