Friedrich Nietzsche is not an acknowledged founding father of cultural anthropology, yet, far more than is realized, his way of thinking propagated and took over in modern anthropology. Some time in the 1880s Nietzsche thought he had the answer to the central question I shall address, which concerns the experience of felt obligation.

That central question is this: how are we to represent the directive content of a culture and how are we to explain and/or justify its directive or motivational force? That is, what are the directives of a culture and why in the world do people feel bound or compelled to obey their commands? Nietzsche's answer to the question is given in one of his famous aphorisms: “being moral means being highly accessible to fear.” Most contemporary anthropologists seem to think he was right, at least in one crucial respect.

Nietzsche's aphorism neatly and radically divides into two isolated or independent parts our central question. On the one hand there is the question: how are we to represent the directive content of a culture? That directive content, the “moral” order, includes, for Nietzsche, not only the specific obligations of a tradition – bury the dead – but also the various demand-generating principles – God, sin, justice, rights, duty – that support them. On the other hand there is the question: how are we to explain and/or justify its directive or motivational force.