Ecce Homo: How To Become What You Are, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oxford University Press, 2007,
0191605220, 9780191605222, 176 pages. 'I am not a man, I am dynamite.' Ecce Homo is an
autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the
genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero
whose life is a chronicle of incessant self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his
descent into madness, the book sub-titled 'How To Become What You Are' passes under review all
Nietzsche's previous works so that we, his 'posthumous' readers, can finally understand him aright,
on his own terms. He reaches final reckonings with his many enemies - Richard Wagner, German
nationalism, 'modern men' in general - and above all Christianity, proclaiming himself the Antichrist.
Ecce Homo is the summation of an extraordinary philosophical career, a last great testament to
Nietzsche's will..
DOWNLOAD FULL VERSION HERE
Ecce Homo , William Ewart Gladstone, 2008, History, 344 pages. This is a pre-1923 historical
reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books
in an attempt to remove books with imperfections ....
Friedrich Nietzsches Briefe an Peter Gast. 1876-1889 Mit Anmerkungen und Namen-Register,
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1908, Philosophy, 540 pages. .
Ecce Homo! , Paul Henri Thiry Holbach (baron d'), 1813, Religion, 347 pages. .
Das leben Friedrich Nietzsche's, Volume 2, Part 2 , Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, 1904,
Philosophy, . .
Techniques of modern art , Judith Collins, 1983, Art, 192 pages. Comments and representations of
works of art from 1900 to the present of artists who revolutionized or created a controversy in the art
world.
Pop art , Jamie James, Oct 24, 1996, Art, 126 pages. Pop Art was one of the most revolutionary art
movements of the 20th century.n the 1950s, a group of artists in Great Britain and the USA, rather
thanespising popular culture ....
Anti-Christ , Friedrich Nietzsche, Jan 25, 1990, Philosophy, 207 pages. 'Twilight of the Idols', an
attack on all the prevalent ideas of his time, offers a lightning tour of his whole philosophy. It also
prepares the way for 'The Anti-Christ', a ....
Twentieth-century America the intellectual and cultural context, Douglas Tallack, 1991, , 432 pages.
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La genealogГÂ-a de la moral , Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 2000, Philosophy, 256 pages.
Nietzsche realiza en La genealogГÂ-a de la moral un ejercicio de aplicaciГіn de su
psicologГÂ-a de la 'voluntad de poder'. Se trata de derivar todas las nociones espirituales a ....
Briefwechsel: kritische Gesamtausgabe. Nachbericht zur ersten ..., Part 1 kritische Gesamtausgabe.
Nachbericht zur ersten Abteilung: Briefe von und an Friedrich Nietzsche Oktober 1849 - April 1869,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Giorgio Colli, 1993, Biography & Autobiography, 960 pages. .
Friedrich Nietzsche philosopher of culture, Frederick Charles Copleston, Jul 1, 1975, Philosophy,
273 pages. .
Human, All Too Human A Book for Free Spirits, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1984, Philosophy, 275
pages. This English translationвЂ―the first since 1909вЂ―restores Human, All Too Human to
its proper central position in the Nietzsche canon. First published in 1878, the book marks the ....
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I am not a man, I am dynamite.'Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately
provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions
to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero whose life is a chronicle of incessant
self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his descent into madness, the book sub-titled
'How To Become What You Are' passes under review all Nietzsche's previous works so that we, his
'posthumous' readers, can finally understandhim aright, on his own terms. He reaches final
reckonings with his many enemies - Richard Wagner, German nationalism, 'modern men' in general
- and above all Christianity, proclaiming himself the Antichrist. Ecce Homo is the summation of an
extraordinary philosophical career, a last great testament toNietzsche's will.
Duncan Large's new translation of Ecce Homo for the Oxford World Classics series is excellent: it is
as authoritative and accurate as it is fresh and easy to read. Anyone teaching this book, especially,
or even recommending it to others, should tell them about this version. It lends an entirely different
flavor to the German, exactly what a new translation should do. Though Roger Hollingdale's version
is the most solid, in my view, and Walter Kaufmann's the most forceful, this translation seems to get
at the precariousness, the grotesqueness of the German, and particularly the tension it establishes
with the tradition of autobiography. The biggest change Large adopted was to use the second
person singular pronoun much more for the German "Man." Thus, for "Wie man wird, was man ist,"
the famous subtitle of the little volume, we do not get the more traditional translation with the
impersonal "one," as in Hollingdale's rendition "How One Becomes What One Is," but the much
more interesting and simple "How To Become What You Are." The effect is remarkable when it is
dispersed across the entire book. It is an entirely different--and I think more interesting--experience
of reading.Though some crucial things are lost (and every version, Kaufmann's especially does this),
Large's translation, I think, benefits in the end for being so very bold. Hollingdale saves some key
words better perhaps than Large, who interprets them more, it could be said--and interprets them
precisely by going back to the roots of the German words, which should not in itself be seen as an
act of fidelity to the source text's meaning, as is so often taken to be the case in philosophical
translations of German (though this allows you, the reader, to reinterpret them more easily). But it
should be noted that Large is *much* more close to the sentence structure than Hollingdale, which,
in Nietzsche, as well as in most German and French, is often much much more crucial than we think
it is (just pick up Barbara Harlow's unbelievably horrible rendering of Derrida's *Spurs*, which
absolutely decimates this fact about Derrida's text, if you want a good example of what this
produces: a translation that is nearly unreadable and extremely misleading at times).Usually,
though, any of these deviations with respect to the accepted translation as represented by
Kaufmann and Hollingdale is done with a lot of thought on Large's part--it is only thus that it could be
so bold in the first place. Take, for example, his refusal to leave Nietzsche's "Ressentiment" in the
French--that is, translate it by "resentment:" at its first appearance he appends a note, sayingThe
standard English translation "ressentiment," characterizes it as a loan-word from the French, but
Nietzsche spells it with an initial capital [this is true in fact always, mj], stressing that he considers it
to have been successfully adopted into the German language (which gives all nouns initial
capitals)--by contrast with "dГ©cadence," [another frequent word that is French in origin], for
instance.-Note to page 13, p. 101.Few would have the guts, I think, to do this to such a well known
and oft quoted concept, but Large both does it and shows that it is right. The fundamental boldness
of this translation, though, lies in that basic gesture I am circling around above, which uses "you"
instead of "one." Why this is so bold is that it fundamentally increases the danger of intimacy, of the
cancellation of distance--which anyone who knows Nietzsche will tell you is absolutely crucial to him
(cf. the famous passages on the "pathos of distance" in the Genealogy). Not only does it increase
the danger for us, but also for Nietzsche himself: if it is true that this book is Nietzsche telling himself
his life--the various "you's" in the text, which can be interpreted as Nietzsche somewhat referring to
himself, show how constantly the pressure is there to maintain some coherence, to will the relation
of himself into some economy, some shape, and yet at the same time not have it collapse into
self-identification. Giving us some sense of this danger might, by itself, be Large's translation's
greatest triumph. Read more ›
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Nietzsche's key ideas include the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy, perspectivism, the Will to Power,
the "death of God", the ГѓЕ“bermensch and eternal recurrence. Central to his philosophy is the idea
of "life-affirmation", which involves questioning of any doctrine that drains one's expansive energies,
however socially prevalent those ideas might be.[44] His radical questioning of the value and
objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary and his influence remains
substantial, particularly in the continental philosophical tradition comprising existentialism,
postmodernism, and post-structuralism.
Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist — a scholar of Greek and Roman textual
criticism — before turning to philosophy. In 1869, at age twenty-four, he was appointed to the Chair
of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, the youngest individual to have held this position.
He resigned in the summer of 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life.[45] In
1889, at age forty-four, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. The
breakdown was later ascribed to atypical general paresis due to tertiary syphilis, but this diagnosis
has come into question.[46] Nietzsche lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her
death in 1897, after which he fell under the care of his sister Elisabeth FГѓВ¶rster-Nietzsche until his
death in 1900.
As his caretaker, his sister assumed the roles of curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts.
FГѓВ¶rster-Nietzsche was married to a prominent German nationalist and antisemite, Bernhard
FГѓВ¶rster, and reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her husband's ideology, often in ways
contrary to Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were strongly and explicitly opposed to antisemitism
and nationalism (see Nietzsche's criticism of antisemitism and nationalism). Through
FГѓВ¶rster-Nietzsche's editions, Nietzsche's name became associated with German militarism and
Nazism, although later twentieth-century scholars have attempted to counteract this misconception
of his ideas.
In 1854, he began to attend Domgymnasium in Naumburg but since he showed particular talents in
music and language, the internationally-recognized Schulpforta admitted him as a pupil. He
transferred and studied there from 1858 to 1864, becoming friends with Paul Deussen and Carl von
Gersdorff. He also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. At Schulpforta,
Nietzsche received an important grounding in languages - Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and French - so as
to be able to read important primary sources;[48] he also experienced for the first time being away
from his family life in a small-town conservative environment. His end-of-semester exams in March
1864 showed a 1 in Religion and German; a 2a in Greek and Latin; a 2b in French, History, and
Physics; and a "lackluster" 3 in Hebrew and Mathematics.[49]
While at Pforta, Nietzsche had a penchant for pursuing subjects that were considered unbecoming.
He became acquainted with the work of the then-almost-unknown poet Friedrich HГѓВ¶lderlin, calling
him "my favorite poet" and composing an essay in which he said that the mad poet raised
consciousness to "the most sublime ideality".[50] The teacher who corrected the essay gave it a
good mark but commented that Nietzsche should concern himself in the future with healthier, more
lucid, and more "German" writers. Additionally, he became acquainted with Ernst Ortlepp, an
eccentric, blasphemous, and often drunk poet who was found dead in a ditch weeks after meeting
the young Nietzsche but who may have introduced Nietzsche to the music and writing of Richard
Wagner.[51] Perhaps under Ortlepp's influence, he and a student named Richter returned to school
drunk and encountered a teacher, resulting in Nietzsche's demotion from first in his class and the
end of his status as a prefect.[52]
After graduation in 1864, Nietzsche commenced studies in theology and classical philology at the
University of Bonn. For a short time he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft
Frankonia. After one semester (and to the anger of his mother) he stopped his theological studies
and lost his faith.[53] As early as his 1862 essay "Fate and History", Nietzsche had argued that
historical research had discredited the central teachings of Christianity,[54] but David Strauss's Life
of Jesus also seems to have had a profound effect on the young man.[53] In 1865, at the age of 20,
Nietzsche wrote to his sister Elisabeth, who was deeply religious, a letter regarding his loss of faith.
This letter ended with a following sentence:
In 1865, Nietzsche thoroughly studied the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. He owed the awakening
of his philosophical interest to reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and
later admitted that Schopenhauer was one of the few thinkers whom he respected, dedicating to him
the essay "Schopenhauer as Educator" in the Untimely Meditations.
In 1866, he read Friedrich Albert Lange's History of Materialism. Lange's descriptions of Kant's
anti-materialistic philosophy, the rise of European Materialism, Europe's increased concern with
science, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and the general rebellion against tradition and
authority intrigued Nietzsche greatly. The cultural environment encouraged him to expand his
horizons beyond philology and continue his study of philosophy,[citation needed] although Nietzsche
would ultimately argue the impossibility of an evolutionary explanation of the human aesthetic
sense.[56]
In 1867, Nietzsche signed up for one year of voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in
Naumburg. He was regarded as one of the finest riders among his fellow recruits, and his officers
predicted that he would soon reach the rank of captain. However, in March 1868, while jumping into
the saddle of his horse, Nietzsche struck his chest against the pommel and tore two muscles in his
left side, leaving him exhausted and unable to walk for months.[57][58] Consequently Nietzsche
turned his attention to his studies again, completing them and meeting with Richard Wagner for the
first time later that year.[59]
In part because of Ritschl's support, Nietzsche received a remarkable offer to become professor of
classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. He was only 24 years old and had
neither completed his doctorate nor received a teaching certificate. Despite the fact that the offer
came at a time when he was considering giving up philology for science, he accepted.[60] To this
day, Nietzsche is still among the youngest of the tenured Classics professors on record.[61] Before
moving to Basel, Nietzsche renounced his Prussian citizenship: for the rest of his life he remained
officially stateless.[62][63]
Nevertheless, Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War
(1870–1871) as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military, he experienced much and
witnessed the traumatic effects of battle. He also contracted diphtheria and dysentery.[citation
needed] Walter Kaufmann speculates that he might also have contracted syphilis along with his
other infections at this time.[64][65] On returning to Basel in 1870, Nietzsche observed the
establishment of the German Empire and Otto von Bismarck's subsequent policies as an outsider
and with a degree of skepticism regarding their genuineness. His inaugural lecture at the university
was "Homer and Classical Philology". Nietzsche also met Franz Overbeck, a professor of theology
who remained his friend throughout his life. Afrikan Spir, a little-known Russian philosopher
responsible for the 1873 Thought and Reality, and Nietzsche's colleague the famed historian Jacob
Burckhardt, whose lectures Nietzsche frequently attended, began to exercise significant influence
on him during this time.[66]
Nietzsche had already met Richard Wagner in Leipzig in 1868 and later Wagner's wife Cosima.
Nietzsche admired both greatly and, during his time at Basel, he frequently visited Wagner's house
in Tribschen in Lucerne. The Wagners brought Nietzsche into their most intimate circle and enjoyed
the attention he gave to the beginning of the Bayreuth Festival. In 1870, he gave Cosima Wagner
the manuscript of "The Genesis of the Tragic Idea" as a birthday gift. In 1872, Nietzsche published
his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. However, his colleagues within his field, including Ritschl,
expressed little enthusiasm for the work, in which Nietzsche eschewed the classical philologic
method in favor of a more speculative approach. In his polemic Philology of the Future, Ulrich von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff dampened the book's reception and increased its notoriety. In response,
Rohde (now a professor in Kiel) and Wagner came to Nietzsche's defense. Nietzsche remarked
freely about the isolation he felt within the philological community and attempted unsuccessfully to
transfer to a position in philosophy at Basel instead.
In 1873, Nietzsche began to accumulate notes that would be posthumously published as Philosophy
in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Between 1873 and 1876, he published four separate long essays:
"David Strauss: the Confessor and the Writer", "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life",
"Schopenhauer as Educator", and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth". These four later appeared in a
collected edition under the title Untimely Meditations. The essays shared the orientation of a cultural
critique, challenging the developing German culture along lines suggested by Schopenhauer and
Wagner. During this time, in the circle of the Wagners, Nietzsche met Malwida von Meysenbug and
Hans von BГѓВјlow, and also began a friendship with Paul RГѓВ©e, who in 1876 influenced him into
dismissing the pessimism in his early writings. However, he was deeply disappointed by the
Bayreuth Festival of 1876, where the banality of the shows and baseness of the public repelled him.
He was also alienated by Wagner's championing of "German culture", which Nietzsche felt a
contradiction in terms, as well as by Wagner's celebration of his fame among the German public. All
this contributed to Nietzsche's subsequent decision to distance himself from Wagner.
With the publication in 1878 of Human, All Too Human (a book of aphorisms ranging from
metaphysics to morality to religion to gender studies), a new style of Nietzsche's work became clear,
highly influenced by Afrikan Spir's Thought and Reality[67] and reacting against the pessimistic
philosophy of Wagner and Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's friendship with Deussen and Rohde cooled
as well. In 1879, after a significant decline in health, Nietzsche had to resign his position at Basel.
(Since his childhood, various disruptive illnesses had plagued him, including moments of
shortsightedness that left him nearly blind, migraine headaches, and violent indigestion. The 1868
riding accident and diseases in 1870 may have aggravated these persistent conditions, which
continued to affect him through his years at Basel, forcing him to take longer and longer holidays
until regular work became impractical.)
Living off his pension from Basel and aid from friends, Nietzsche traveled frequently to find climates
more conducive to his health and lived until 1889 as an independent author in different cities. He
spent many summers in Sils Maria near St. Moritz in Switzerland. He spent his winters in the Italian
cities of Genoa, Rapallo, and Turin and the French city of Nice. In 1881, when France occupied
Tunisia, he planned to travel to Tunis to view Europe from the outside but later abandoned that idea,
probably for health reasons.[68] Nietzsche occasionally returned to Naumburg to visit his family,
and, especially during this time, he and his sister had repeated periods of conflict and reconciliation.
While in Genoa, Nietzsche's failing eyesight prompted him to explore the use of typewriters as a
means of continuing to write. He is known to have tried using the Hansen Writing Ball, a
contemporary typewriter device. In the end, a past student of his, Peter Gast, became a sort of
private secretary to Nietzsche. In 1876, Gast transcribed the crabbed, nearly illegible handwriting of
Nietzsche for the first time with Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.[69] He subsequently transcribed and
proofread the galleys for almost all of Nietzsche's work from then on. On at least one occasion on
February 23, 1880, the usually-broke Gast received 200 marks from their mutual friend, Paul
RГѓВ©e.[70] Gast was one of the very few friends Nietzsche allowed to criticize him. In responding
most enthusiastically to Zarathustra, Gast did feel it necessary to point out that what were described
as "superfluous" people were in fact quite necessary. He went on to list the number of people
Epicurus, for example, had to rely on even to supply his simple diet of goat cheese.[71]
To the end of his life, Gast and Overbeck remained consistently faithful friends. Malwida von
Meysenbug remained like a motherly patron even outside the Wagner circle. Soon Nietzsche made
contact with the music-critic Carl Fuchs. Nietzsche stood at the beginning of his most productive
period. Beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878, Nietzsche would publish one book or major
section of a book each year until 1888, his last year of writing; that year, he completed five.
In 1882, Nietzsche published the first part of The Gay Science. That year he also met Lou Andreas
SalomГѓВ©,[72] through Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul RГѓВ©e. Nietzsche and SalomГѓВ© spent the
summer together in Tautenburg in Thuringia, often with Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth as a chaperone.
Nietzsche, however, regarded SalomГѓВ© less as an equal partner than as a gifted student. SalomГѓВ©
reports that he asked her to marry him and that she refused, though the reliability of her reports of
events has come into question.[73] Nietzsche's relationship with RГѓВ©e and SalomГѓВ© broke up in
the winter of 1882–83, partially because of intrigues conducted by Elisabeth. Amidst renewed
bouts of illness, living in near-isolation after a falling out with his mother and sister regarding
SalomГѓВ©, Nietzsche fled to Rapallo. Here he wrote the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in only
ten days.
After severing his philosophical ties with Schopenhauer (who was long dead and never met
Nietzsche) and his social ties with Wagner, Nietzsche had few remaining friends. Now, with the new
style of Zarathustra, his work became even more alienating and the market received it only to the
degree required by politeness. Nietzsche recognized this and maintained his solitude, though he
often complained about it. His books remained largely unsold. In 1885, he printed only 40 copies of
the fourth part of Zarathustra and distributed only a fraction of these among close friends, including
Helene von Druskowitz.
In 1883, he tried and failed to obtain a lecturing post at the University of Leipzig. It was made clear
to him that, in view of the attitude towards Christianity and the concept of God expressed in
Zarathustra, he had become effectively unemployable by any German university. The subsequent
"feelings of revenge and resentment" embittered him: "And hence my rage since I have grasped in
the broadest possible sense what wretched means (the depreciation of my good name, my
character, and my aims) suffice to take from me the trust of, and therewith the possibility of
obtaining, pupils."[76]
In 1886, Nietzsche broke with his publisher Ernst Schmeitzner, disgusted by his antisemitic
opinions. Nietzsche saw his own writings as "completely buried and unexhumeable in this
anti-Semitic dump" of Schmeitzner — associating the publisher with a movement that should be
"utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind".[77] He then printed Beyond Good and
Evil at his own expense. He also acquired the publication rights for his earlier works and over the
next year issued second editions of The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human, Dawn, and The
Gay Science with new prefaces placing the body of his work in a more coherent perspective.
Thereafter, he saw his work as completed for a time and hoped that soon a readership would
develop. In fact, interest in Nietzsche's thought did increase at this time, if rather slowly and hardly
perceptibly to him. During these years Nietzsche met Meta von Salis, Carl Spitteler, and Gottfried
Keller.
In 1886, his sister Elisabeth also married the antisemite Bernhard FГѓВ¶rster and traveled to
Paraguay to found Nueva Germania, a "Germanic" colony—a plan to which Nietzsche responded
with mocking laughter.[78] Through correspondence, Nietzsche's relationship with Elisabeth
continued through cycles of conflict and reconciliation, but they met again only after his collapse. He
continued to have frequent and painful attacks of illness, which made prolonged work impossible.
In 1887, Nietzsche wrote the polemic "On the Genealogy of Morals". During the same year
Nietzsche encountered the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, to whom he felt an immediate kinship.[79]
He also exchanged letters with Hippolyte Taine and Georg Brandes. Brandes, who had started to
teach the philosophy of SГѓВёren Kierkegaard in the 1870s, wrote to Nietzsche asking him to read
Kierkegaard, to which Nietzsche replied that he would come to Copenhagen and read Kierkegaard
with him. However, before fulfilling this promise, he slipped too far into illness. In the beginning of
1888, Brandes delivered in Copenhagen one of the first lectures on Nietzsche's philosophy.
Although Nietzsche had previous announced at the end of "On The Genealogy of Morals" a new
work with the title The Will to Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values, he eventually seems to
have abandoned this particular approach and instead used some of the draft passages to compose
Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist in 1888.[80]
His health seemed to improve, and he spent the summer in high spirits. In the fall of 1888, his
writings and letters began to reveal a higher estimation of his own status and "fate". He
overestimated the increasing response to his writings, especially to the recent polemic, "The Case of
Wagner". On his 44th birthday, after completing Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, he decided
to write the autobiography Ecce Homo. In the preface to this work — which suggests Nietzsche
was well aware of the interpretive difficulties his work would generate — he declares, "Hear me!
For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else".[81] In
December, Nietzsche began a correspondence with August Strindberg and thought that, short of an
international breakthrough, he would attempt to buy back his older writings from the publisher and
have them translated into other European languages. Moreover, he planned the publication of the
compilation Nietzsche Contra Wagner and of the poems that made up his collection Dionysian
Dithyrambs.
On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. Two policemen approached him after he
caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. What happened remains unknown, but an
often-repeated tale from shortly after his death states that Nietzsche witnessed the flogging of a
horse at the other end of the Piazza Carlo Alberto, ran to the horse, threw his arms up around its
neck to protect it, and then collapsed to the ground.[82][83]
In the following few days, Nietzsche sent short writings—known as the Wahnbriefe ("Madness
Letters")—to a number of friends including Cosima Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt. Most of them
were signed "Dionysos". To his former colleague Burckhardt, Nietzsche wrote: "I have had Caiaphas
put in fetters. Also, last year I was crucified by the German doctors in a very drawn-out manner.
Wilhelm, Bismarck, and all anti-Semites abolished." [84] Additionally, he commanded the German
emperor to go to Rome to be shot and summoned the European powers to take military action
against Germany.[85]
On January 6, 1889, Burckhardt showed the letter he had received from Nietzsche to Overbeck. The
following day Overbeck received a similar letter and decided that Nietzsche's friends had to bring
him back to Basel. Overbeck traveled to Turin and brought Nietzsche to a psychiatric clinic in Basel.
By that time Nietzsche appeared fully in the grip of a serious mental illness, and his mother
Franziska decided to transfer him to a clinic in Jena under the direction of Otto Binswanger. From
November 1889 to February 1890, the art historian Julius Langbehn attempted to cure Nietzsche,
claiming that the methods of the medical doctors were ineffective in treating Nietzsche's condition.
Langbehn assumed progressively greater control of Nietzsche until his secretiveness discredited
him. In March 1890, Franziska removed Nietzsche from the clinic and, in May 1890, brought him to
her home in Naumburg. During this process Overbeck and Gast contemplated what to do with
Nietzsche's unpublished works. In January 1889 (date seems out of order), they proceeded with the
planned release of Twilight of the Idols, by that time already printed and bound. In February, they
ordered a fifty-copy private edition of Nietzsche contra Wagner, but the publisher C. G. Naumann
secretly printed one hundred. Overbeck and Gast decided to withhold publishing The Antichrist and
Ecce Homo because of their more radical content. Nietzsche's reception and recognition enjoyed
their first surge.
In 1893, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth returned from Nueva Germania in Paraguay following the
suicide of her husband. She read and studied Nietzsche's works and, piece by piece, took control of
them and their publication. Overbeck eventually suffered dismissal and Gast finally co-operated.
After the death of Franziska in 1897, Nietzsche lived in Weimar, where Elisabeth cared for him and
allowed visitors, including Rudolf Steiner (who in 1895 had written one of the first books praising
Nietzsche),[86][page needed] to meet her uncommunicative brother. Elisabeth at one point went so
far as to employ Steiner as a tutor to help her to understand her brother's philosophy. Steiner
abandoned the attempt after only a few months, declaring that it was impossible to teach her
anything about philosophy.[87]
Nietzsche's mental illness was originally diagnosed as tertiary syphilis, in accordance with a
prevailing medical paradigm of the time. Although most commentators regard his breakdown as
unrelated to his philosophy, Georges Bataille dropped dark hints ("Man incarnate' must also go
mad")[88] and RenГѓВ© Girard's postmortem psychoanalysis posits a worshipful rivalry with Richard
Wagner.[89] Nietzsche had previously written, "all superior men who were irresistibly drawn to throw
off the yoke of any kind of morality and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually mad, no
alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be mad" (Daybreak,14). The diagnosis of syphilis
has since been challenged and a diagnosis of "manic-depressive illness with periodic psychosis
followed by vascular dementia" was put forward by Cybulska prior to Schain's study.[90][91]
Leonard Sax suggested the slow growth of a right-sided retro-orbital meningioma as an explanation
of Nietzsche’s dementia,[92] while Orth and Trimble postulated frontotemporal dementia.[93]
Other researchers[94] proposed a syndrome called CADASIL.
In 1898 and 1899, Nietzsche suffered at least two strokes which partially paralysed him and left him
unable to speak or walk. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900, he had another stroke
during the night of August 24–25 and died about noon on August 25.[95] Elisabeth had him buried
beside his father at the church in RГѓВ¶cken bei LГѓВјtzen. His friend and secretary Gast gave his
funeral oration, proclaiming: "Holy be your name to all future generations!"[96] Nietzsche had written
in Ecce Homo (at that point still unpublished) of his fear that one day his name would be regarded
as "holy".
Elisabeth FГѓВ¶rster-Nietzsche compiled The Will to Power from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks
and published it posthumously. Because his sister arranged the book based on her own conflation
of several of Nietzsche's early outlines and took great liberties with the material, the scholarly
consensus has been that it does not reflect Nietzsche's intent. (For example, Elisabeth removed
aphorism 35 of The Antichrist, where Nietzsche rewrote a passage of the Bible.) Indeed, Mazzino
Montinari, the editor of Nietzsche's Nachlass, called it a forgery.[97]
General commentators and Nietzsche scholars, whether emphasizing his cultural background or his
language, overwhelmingly label Nietzsche as a "German philosopher".[98][99][100][101] Others do
not assign him a national category.[102][103][104] Germany had not yet been unified into a
nation-state but Nietzsche was born a citizen of Prussia, which was then part of the German
Confederation.[105] His birthplace, RГѓВ¶cken, is in the modern German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
When he accepted his post at Basel, Nietzsche applied for the annulment of his Prussian
citizenship.[106] The official response confirming the revocation of his citizenship came in a
document dated April 17, 1869,[107] and for the rest of his life he remained officially stateless.
Nietzsche believed that his ancestors were Polish.[108] Nietzsche himself subscribed to this story
toward the end of his life. He wrote in 1888, "My ancestors were Polish noblemen (Nietzky); the type
seems to have been well preserved despite three generations of German mothers."[109] At one
point Nietzsche becomes even more adamant about his Polish identity. "I am a pure-blooded Polish
nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood."[110] On yet another
occasion Nietzsche stated "Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish
blood in their veins [...] I am proud of my Polish descent."[111] Nietzsche believed his name might
have been Germanized, in one letter claiming, "I was taught to ascribe the origin of my blood and
name to Polish noblemen who were called NiГѓВ«tzky and left their home and nobleness about a
hundred years ago, finally yielding to unbearable suppression: they were Protestants."[112]
Most scholars dispute Nietzsche's account of his family's origins. Hans von MГѓВјller debunked the
genealogy put forward by Nietzsche's sister in favor of a Polish noble heritage.[113] Max Oehler, the
curator of the Nietzsche Archive at Weimar, argued that all of Nietzsche's ancestors bore German
names, even the wives' families.[109] Oehler claims that Nietzsche came from a long line of German
Lutheran clergymen on both sides of his family, and modern scholars regard the claim of
Nietzsche's Polish ancestry as a "pure invention".[114] Colli and Montinari, the editors of Nietzsche's
assembled letters, gloss Nietzsche's claims as a "mistaken belief" and "without
foundation."[115][116] The name Nietzsche itself is not a Polish name, but an exceptionally common
one throughout central Germany, in this and cognate forms (such as Nitsche and Nitzke). The name
derives from the forename Nikolaus, abbreviated to Nick; assimilated with the Slavic Nitz, it first
became Nitsche and then Nietzsche.[109]
Nietzsche is known for his use of poetry and prose (sometimes together in poetic prose style) in his
writings. An excellent example is his iconic phrase "God is dead", in German: Gott ist tot. This,
combined with the fact that he disdained any kind of system, has made several aspects of his
philosophy seemingly lacking coherent meaning or being paradoxical. Because of Nietzsche's
evocative style and his often outrageous claims, his philosophy generates passionate reactions
running from love to disgust. His works remain controversial, due to varying interpretations and
misinterpretations of his work. In Western philosophy tradition, Nietzsche's writings are the unique
case of free revolutionary thought that is revolutionary in its structure and problems but isn't tied to
any revolutionary project at all.[117]
In The Dawn Nietzsche begins his "Campaign against Morality".[118][119] He calls himself an
"immoralist" and harshly criticizes the prominent moral philosophies of his day: Christianity,
Kantianism, and utilitarianism. Nietzsche is also known for being very critical of the Western belief in
egalitarianism and rationality. Nietzsche's concept "God is dead" applies to the doctrines of
Christendom, though not to all other faiths: he claimed that Buddhism is a successful religion that he
compliments for fostering critical thought.[120] Still, Nietzsche saw his philosophy as a
counter-movement to nihilism through appreciation of art:
Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith as practiced was not a proper representation of Jesus'
teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did, in
particular his example of refusing to judge people, something that Christians had constantly done
the opposite of.[120] He condemned institutionalized Christianity for emphasizing a morality of pity
(Mitleid), which assumes an inherent illness in society[122]:
Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten
our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of
strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity
makes suffering contagious.[123]
In Ecce Homo Nietzsche called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good
and evil a "calamitous error",[124] and wished to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the
Judeo-Christian world.[125] He indicates his desire to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of
value in the vital impulses of life itself. While Nietzsche attacked the principles of Judaism, he was
not antisemitic: in his work On the Genealogy of Morality, he explicitly condemns antisemitism, and
pointed out that his attack on Judaism was not an attack on Jews as a people but specifically an
attack upon the ancient Jewish priesthood whom he claims antisemitic Christians paradoxically
based their views upon.[126]
The initial form of morality was set by a warrior aristocracy and other ruling castes of ancient
civilizations. Aristocratic values of "good" and "bad" coincided with and reflected their relationship to
lower castes such as slaves. Nietzsche presents this "master morality" as the original system of
morality—perhaps best associated with Homeric Greece. To be "good" was to be happy and to
have the things related to happiness: wealth, strength, health, power, etc. To be "bad" was to be like
the slaves over which the aristocracy ruled, poor, weak, sick, pathetic—an object of pity or disgust
rather than hatred.
"Slave morality" comes about as a reaction to master-morality. Here, value emerges from the
contrast between good and evil: good being associated with other-worldliness, charity, piety,
restraint, meekness, and submission; and evil seen as worldly, cruel, selfish, wealthy, and
aggressive. Nietzsche sees slave morality as pessimistic and fearful, values for them serving only to
ease the existence for those who suffer from the very same thing. He associates slave-morality with
the Jewish and Christian traditions, in a way that slave-morality is born out of the ressentiment of
slaves. Nietzsche argued that the idea of equality allowed slaves to overcome their own condition
without hating themselves. And by denying the inherent inequality of people (such as success,
strength, beauty or intelligence), slaves acquired a method of escape, namely by generating new
values on the basis of rejecting something that was seen as a perceived source of frustration. It was
used to overcome the slave's own sense of inferiority before the (better-off) masters. It does so by
making out slave weakness to be a matter of choice, by, e.g., relabeling it as "meekness." The
"good man" of master morality is precisely the "evil man" of slave morality, while the "bad man" is
recast as the "good man."
Nietzsche sees the slave-morality as a source of the nihilism that has overtaken Europe. Modern
Europe and Christianity exist in a hypocritical state due to a tension between master and slave
morality, both values contradictorily determining, to varying degrees, the values of most Europeans
(who are motley). Nietzsche calls for exceptional people to no longer be ashamed of their
uniqueness in the face of a supposed morality-for-all, which he deems to be harmful to the
flourishing of exceptional people. He cautions, however, that morality, per se, is not bad; it is good
for the masses, and should be left to them. Exceptional people, on the other hand, should follow
their own "inner law." A favorite motto of Nietzsche, taken from Pindar, reads: "Become what you
are."
A long standing assumption about Nietzsche is that he preferred master over slave morality.
However, Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann rejected this interpretation, writing that Nietzsche's
analyses of these two types of morality were only used in a descriptive and historic sense, they were
not meant for any kind of acceptance or glorifications.[127]
The statement God is dead, occurring in several of Nietzsche's works (notably in The Gay Science),
has become one of his best-known remarks. On the basis of it, most commentators[128] regard
Nietzsche as an atheist; others (such as Kaufmann) suggest that this statement reflects a more
subtle understanding of divinity. Recent developments in modern science and the increasing
secularization of European society had effectively 'killed' the Abrahamic God, who had served as the
basis for meaning and value in the West for more than a thousand years. The death of God may
lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any inherent
importance and that life lacks purpose. Here he states that the Christian moral doctrine provides
people with intrinsic value, belief in God (which justifies the evil in the world) and a basis for
objective knowledge. In this sense, in constructing a world where objective knowledge is possible,
Christianity is an antidote to a primal form of nihilism — the despair of meaninglessness. As
Heidegger put the problem, "If God as the suprasensory ground and goal of all reality is dead, if the
suprasensory world of the ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory and above it its vitalizing and
upbuilding power, then nothing more remains to which man can cling and by which he can orient
himself."[129]
One such reaction to the loss of meaning is what Nietzsche calls 'passive nihilism', which he
recognises in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's doctrine, which
Nietzsche also refers to as Western Buddhism, advocates a separating oneself of will and desires in
order to reduce suffering. Nietzsche characterises this ascetic attitude as a "will to nothingness",
whereby life turns away from itself, as there is nothing of value to be found in the world. This moving
away of all value in the world is characteristic of the nihilist, although in this, the nihilist appears to
be inconsistent:[130]
A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought
to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling)
has no meaning: the pathos of 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos — at the same time, as pathos, an
inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.
Nietzsche approaches the problem of nihilism as a deeply personal one, stating that this problem of
the modern world is a problem that has "become conscious" in him.[131] Furthermore, he
emphasises both the danger of nihilism and the possibilities it offers, as seen in his statement that "I
praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the
deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of
this crisis, is a question of his strength!"[132] According to Nietzsche, it is only when nihilism is
overcome that a culture can have a true foundation upon which to thrive. He wished to hasten its
coming only so that he could also hasten its ultimate departure. Heidegger interprets the death of
God with what he explains as the death of metaphysics. He concludes that metaphysics has
reached its potential and that the ultimate fate and downfall of metaphysics was proclaimed with the
statement God is dead.
The Apollonian and Dionysian is a philosophical concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features of
ancient Greek mythology: Apollo and Dionysus. While the concept is famously related to The Birth of
Tragedy, poet HГѓВ¶lderlin spoke of them before, and Winckelmann talked of Bacchus. One year
before the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche wrote a fragment titled "On Music and
Words".[133] In it he asserted the Schopenhauerian judgment that music is a primary expression of
the essence of everything. Secondarily derivative are lyrical poetry and drama, which represent
mere phenomenal appearances of objects. In this way, tragedy is born from music.
Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism found in
the so-called wisdom of Silenus. The Greek spectators, by looking into the abyss of human suffering
depicted by characters on stage, passionately and joyously affirmed life, finding it worth living. A
main theme in The Birth of Tragedy was that the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttrieben"
("artistic impulses") forms dramatic arts, or tragedies. He goes on to argue that this fusion has not
been achieved since the ancient Greek tragedians. Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity and
logic, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion and ecstasy. Nietzsche used
these two forces because, for him, the world of mind and order on one side, and passion and chaos
on the other formed principles that were fundamental to the Greek culture.[134][135] Apollonian side
being a dreaming state, full of illusions; and Dionysian being the state of intoxication, representing
the liberations of instinct and dissolution of boundaries. In this mold, man appears as the satyr. He is
the horror of the annihilation of the principle of individuality and at the same time someone who
delights in its destruction.[136] Both of these principles are meant to represent cognitive states that
appear through art as the power of nature in man.[137]
The relationship between the Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions is apparent, in the interplay of
tragedy: the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make order (in the
Apollonian sense) of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) fate, though he dies unfulfilled in the end.
Elaborating on the conception of Hamlet as an intellectual who cannot make up his mind, and
therefore is a living antithesis to the man of action, Nietzsche argues that a Dionysian figure
possesses knowledge to realize that his actions cannot change the eternal balance of things, and it
disgusts him enough not to be able to make any act at all. Hamlet falls under this category – he
has glimpsed the supernatural reality through the Ghost, he has gained true knowledge and knows
that no action of his has the power to change this.[138][139] For the audience of such drama, this
tragedy allows them to sense an underlying essence, what Nietzsche called the Primordial Unity,
which revives Dionysian nature. He describes this primordial unity as the increase of strength,
experience of fullness and plenitude bestowed by frenzy. Frenzy acts as an intoxication, and is
crucial for the physiological condition that enables making of any art.[140] Stimulated by this state,
person's artistic will is enhanced:
"In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is
seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they
mirror his power - until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection
is - art."
Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles represent the apex of artistic
creation, the true realization of tragedy; it is with Euripides, he states, that tragedy begins its
"Untergang" (literally "going under", meaning decline, deterioration, downfall, death, etc.). Nietzsche
objects to Euripides' use of Socratic rationalism and morality in his tragedies, claiming that the
infusion of ethics and reason robs tragedy of its foundation, namely the fragile balance of the
Dionysian and Apollonian. Socrates emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value
of myth and suffering to human knowledge. Plato continued with this path in his dialogues and
modern world eventually inherited reason at the expense of artistic impulses that could be found
only in the Apollonian and Dionysus dichotomy. This leads to his conclusion that European culture
from the time of Socrates had always been only Apollonian and thus decadent and unhealthy.[141]
He notes that whenever Apollonian culture dominates, the Dionysian lacks the structure to make a
coherent art, and when Dionysian dominates, the Apollonian lacks the necessary passion. Only the
beautiful middle; the interplay of these two forces brought together as an art represented real Greek
tragedy.[142]
An example of the impact of this idea can be seen in the book Patterns of Culture, where
anthropologist Ruth Benedict uses Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" as the
stimulus for her thoughts about Native American cultures.[143] Carl Jung has written extensively on
the dichotomy in Psychological Types.[144] Michel Foucault has commented that his book Madness
and Civilization should be read "under the sun of the great Nietzschean inquiry". Here Foucault
references Nietzsche's description of the birth and death of tragedy and his explanation that the
subsequent tragedy of the Western world was the refusal of tragic and, with that, refusal of the
sacred.[145] Painter Mark Rothko was influenced by Nietzsche's view of tragedy, which were
presented in The Birth of Tragedy.
Nietzsche claimed the death of God would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective
on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth.[146][147][page needed] Nietzsche
himself rejected the idea of objective reality arguing that knowledge is contingent and conditional,
relative to various fluid perspectives or interests.[148] This leads to constant reassessment of rules
(i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) according to the circumstances of individual
perspectives.[149] This view has acquired the name perspectivism.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche proclaims that a table of values hangs above every great
people. He points out that what is common among different peoples is the act of esteeming, of
creating values, even if the values are different from one people to the next. Nietzsche asserts that
what made people great was not the content of their beliefs, but the act of valuing. Thus the values
a community strives to articulate are not as important as the collective will to see those values come
to pass. The willing is more essential than the intrinsic worth of the goal itself, according to
Nietzsche. "A thousand goals have there been so far," says Zarathustra, "for there are a thousand
peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. Humanity still
has no goal." Hence, the title of the aphorism, "On The Thousand And One Goals". The idea that
one value-system is no more worthy than the next, although it may not be directly ascribed to
Nietzsche, has become a common premise in modern social science. Max Weber and Martin
Heidegger absorbed it and made it their own. It shaped their philosophical and cultural endeavor, as
well as their political understanding. Weber for example, relies on Nietzsche's perspectivism by
maintaining that objectivity is still possible—but only after a particular perspective, value, or end
has been established.[150][151]
Among his critique of traditional philosophy of Kant, Descartes and Plato in Beyond Good and Evil,
Nietzsche attacked thing in itself and cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) as unfalsifiable beliefs
based on naive acceptance of previous notions and fallacies.[152] Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre
puts Nietzsche in a high place in the history of philosophy. While criticizing nihilism and Nietzsche
together as a sign of general decay,[153] he still commends him for recognizing psychological
motives behind Kant and Hume's moral philosophy:[154]
A basic element in Nietzsche's philosophical outlook is the will to power (der Wille zur Macht), which
provides a basis for understanding human behavior — more so than competing explanations, such
as the ones based on pressure for adaptation or survival.[156][157][158] As such, according to
Nietzsche, the drive for conservation appears as the major motivator of human or animal behavior
only in exceptions, as the general condition of life is not one of emergency, of 'struggle for
existence'.[159] More often than not, self-conservation is but a consequence of a creature's will to
exert its strength on the outside world.
In presenting his theory of human behavior, Nietzsche also addressed, and attacked, concepts from
philosophies popularly embraced in his days, such as Schopenhauer's notion of an aimless will or
that of utilitarianism. Utilitarians claim that what moves people is mainly the desire to be happy, to
accumulate pleasure in their lives. But such a conception of happiness Nietzsche rejected as
something limited to, and characteristic of, the bourgeois lifestyle of the English society,[160] and
instead put forth the idea that happiness is not an aim per se — it is instead a consequence of a
successful pursuit of one's aims, of the overcoming of hurdles to one's actions — in other words, of
the fulfillment of the will.[161]
Related to his theory of the will to power, is his speculation, which he did not deem final,[162]
regarding the reality of the physical world, including inorganic matter — that, like man's affections
and impulses, the material world is also set by the dynamics of a form of the will to power. At the
core of his theory is a rejection of atomism — the idea that matter is composed of stable, indivisible
units (atoms). Instead, he seems to have accepted the conclusions of Ru�er Bošković, who
explained the qualities of matter as a result of an interplay of forces.[163][164] One study of
Nietzsche defines his fully developed concept of the will to power as "the element from which derive
both the quantitative difference of related forces and the quality that devolves into each force in this
relation" revealing the will to power as "the principle of the synthesis of forces."[165] Of such forces
Nietzsche said they could perhaps be viewed as a primitive form of the will. Likewise he rejected as
a mere interpretation the view that the movement of bodies is ruled by inexorable laws of nature,
positing instead that movement was governed by the power relations between bodies and
forces.[166]
Eternal return (also known as "eternal recurrence") is a concept which posits that the universe has
been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across
infinite time or space. It is a purely physical concept, involving no supernatural reincarnation, but the
return of beings in the same bodies. The idea of eternal return occurs in a parable in Section 341 of
The Gay Science, and also in the chapter "Of the Vision and the Riddle" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
among other places.[167] Nietzsche contemplates the idea as potentially "horrifying and paralyzing",
and says that its burden is the "heaviest weight" imaginable ("das schwerste Gewicht").[168] The
wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life, a reaction to
Schopenhauer's praise of denying the will―to―live. To comprehend eternal recurrence in his
thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of
fate".[169]
Alexander Nehamas writes in Nietzsche: Life as Literature of three ways of seeing the eternal
recurrence: "(A) My life will recur in exactly identical fashion." This expresses a totally fatalistic
approach to the idea. "(B) My life may recur in exactly identical fashion." This second view
conditionally asserts cosmology, but fails to capture what Nietzsche refers to in The Gay Science,
341. Finally, "(C) If my life were to recur, then it could recur only in identical fashion." Nehamas
shows that this interpretation exists totally independently of physics and does not presuppose the
truth of cosmology. Nehamas draws the conclusion that if individuals constitute themselves through
their actions, then they can only maintain themselves in their current state by living in a recurrence
of past actions (Nehamas 153). Nietzsche's thought is the negation of the idea of a history of
salvation.[170]
I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to
overcome him?... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to
be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is
ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a
laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in
you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape... The
overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the
earth... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss ... what is great in
man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
Zarathustra contrasts the overman with the last man of egalitarian modernity (most obvious example
being democracy), an alternative goal which humanity might set for itself. The last man is possible
only by mankind's having bred an apathetic creature who has no great passion or commitment, who
is unable to dream, who merely earns his living and keeps warm. This concept appears only in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, and is presented as a condition that would render the creation of the overman
impossible.[178]
Some have suggested that the notion of eternal return is related to the overman since willing the
eternal return of the same is a necessary step if the overman is to create new values, untainted by
the spirit of gravity or asceticism. Values involve a rank-ordering of things, and so are inseparable
from approval and disapproval; yet it was dissatisfaction that prompted men to seek refuge in
other-worldliness and embrace other-worldly values. It could seem that the overman, in being
devoted to any values at all, would necessarily fail to create values that did not share some bit of
asceticism. Willing the eternal recurrence is presented as accepting the existence of the low while
still recognizing it as the low, and thus as overcoming the spirit of gravity or asceticism. One must
have the strength of the overman in order to will the eternal recurrence of the same; that is, only the
overman will have the strength to fully accept all of his past life, including his failures and misdeeds,
and to truly will their eternal return. This action nearly kills Zarathustra, for example, and most
human beings cannot avoid other-worldliness because they really are sick, not because of any
choice they made.
As a philologist, Nietzsche had a thorough knowledge of Greek philosophy. He read Immanuel Kant,
Plato, John Stuart Mill, Arthur Schopenhauer and African Spir,[179] who became his main
opponents in his philosophy, and later Spinoza, whom he saw as his "precursor" in some
respects[180] but as a personification of the "ascetic ideal" in others. However, Nietzsche referred to
Kant as a "moral fanatic", Plato as "boring", Mill as a "blockhead", and of Spinoza he said: "How
much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray?".[181]
Nietzsche's philosophy, while highly innovative and revolutionary, was indebted to many
predecessors. While at Basel, Nietzsche offered lecture courses on the "Pre-Platonic Philosophers"
for several years, and the text of this lecture series has been characterized as a "lost link" in the
development of his thought. "In it concepts such as the will to power, the eternal return of the same,
the overman, gay science, self-overcoming and so on receive rough, unnamed formulations and are
linked to specific pre-Platonics, especially Heraclitus, who emerges as a pre-Platonic
Nietzsche."[182] The pre-Socratic Greek thinker Heraclitus was known for the rejection of the
concept of being as a constant and eternal principle of universe, and his embrace of "flux" and
incessant change. His symbolism of the world as "child play" marked by amoral spontaneity and lack
of definite rules was appreciated by Nietzsche.[183] From his Heraclitean sympathy, Nietzsche was
also a vociferous detractor of Parmenides, who opposed Heraclitus and believed all world is a single
Being with no change at all.[184]
In his Egotism in German Philosophy, Santayana claimed that Nietzsche's whole philosophy was a
reaction to Schopenhauer. Santayana wrote that Nietzsche's work was "an emendation of that of
Schopenhauer. The will to live would become the will to dominate; pessimism founded on reflection
would become optimism founded on courage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would yield
to a more biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in the place of pity and asceticism
(Schopenhauer's two principles of morals) Nietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all
costs and being cruelly but beautifully strong. These points of difference from Schopenhauer cover
the whole philosophy of Nietzsche."[185]
Nietzsche's growing prominence suffered a severe setback when his works became closely
associated with Adolf Hitler and the German Reich. Many political leaders of the twentieth century
were at least superficially familiar with Nietzsche's ideas, although it is not always possible to
determine whether they actually read his work. Hitler, for example, probably never read Nietzsche
and, if he did, his reading was not extensive,[248][249][250][251] although he was a frequent visitor
to the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and did use expressions of Nietzsche's, such as "lords of the
earth" in Mein Kampf.[252] The Nazis made selective use of Nietzsche's philosophy.
Mussolini,[253][254] Charles de Gaulle[255] and Huey P. Newton[256] read Nietzsche. Richard
Nixon read Nietzsche with "curious interest," and his book Beyond Peace might have taken its title
from Nietzsche's book Beyond Good and Evil which Nixon read beforehand.[257] Bertrand Russell
wrote that Nietzsche had exerted great influence on philosophers and on people of literary and
artistic culture, but warned that the attempt to put Nietzsche's philosophy of aristocracy into practice
could only be done by an organization similar to the Fascist or the Nazi party.[258]
A decade after World War II, there was a revival of Nietzsche's philosophical writings thanks to
exhaustive translations and analyses by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. Others, well known
philosophers in their own right, wrote commentaries on Nietzsche's philosophy, including Martin
Heidegger, who produced a four-volume study and Lev Shestov who wrote a book called
Dostoyevski, Tolstoy and Nietzsche where he portrays Nietzsche and Dostoyevski as the "thinkers
of tragedy".[259] Georg Simmel compares Nietzsche's importance to ethics to that of Copernicus for
cosmology.[260] Sociologist Ferdinand TГѓВ¶nnies read Nietzsche avidly from his early life, and later
frequently discussed many of his concepts in his own works. Nietzsche has influenced philosophers
such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre,[261] Oswald Spengler,[262] George Grant,[263] Emil
Cioran,[264] Albert Camus, Ayn Rand,[265] Jacques Derrida, Leo Strauss,[266] Max Scheler,
Michel Foucault and Bernard Williams. Camus described Nietzsche as "the only artist to have
derived the extreme consequences of an aesthetics of the absurd".[267] Paul Ricœur called
Nietzsche one of the masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Karl Marx and Sigmund
Freud.[268]
^ Safranski, RГѓВјdiger (trans. Shelley Frisch). Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, p. 161. W. W.
Norton & Company, 2003. "This work had long been consigned to oblivion, but it had a lasting
impact on Nietzsche. Section 18 of Human, All Too Human cited Spir, not by name, but by
presenting a 'proposition by an outstanding logician' (2,38; HH I §18)."
^ Simon, Gerald (January 1889). "Nietzsches Briefe. AusgewГѓВ¤hlte Korrespondenz. Wahnbriefe.".
The Nietzsche Channel. Retrieved 24 August 2013. "Ich habe Kaiphas in Ketten legen lassen; auch
bin ich voriges Jahr von den deutschen Ärzten auf eine sehr langwierige Weise gekreuzigt worden.
Wilhelm, Bismarck und alle Antisemiten abgeschafft."
^ Johan Grzelczyk, "FГѓВ©rГѓВ© et Nietzsche : au sujet de la dГѓВ©cadence", HyperNietzsche,
2005-11-01 (French). Grzelczyk quotes B. Wahrig-Schmidt, "Irgendwie, jedenfalls physiologisch.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Alexandre Herzen (fils) und Charles FГѓВ©rГѓВ© 1888" in Nietzsche Studien, Band
17, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988, p. 439
^ Andrew C. Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World, Stanford University Press, 2002, p
184: "By all indications, Hitler never read Nietzsche. Neither Mein Kampf nor Hitler's Table Talk
(Tischgesprache) mentions his name. Nietzschean ideas reached him through the filter of Alfred
Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century, and, more simply, through what was coffeehouse
Quatsch in Vienna and Munich. This at least is the impression he gives in his published
conversations with Dietrich Eckart."
^ J. L. Gaddis, P. H. Gordon, E. R. May, J. Rosenberg, Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb,
Oxford University Press, 1999, p 217: "The son of a history teacher, de Gaulle read voraciously as a
boy and young man—Jacques Bainville, Henri Bergson, Friederich [sic] Nietzsche, Maurice
Barres—and was steeped in conservative French historical and philosophical traditions."
allusion Antichrist attack Basle Bayreuth Festival become Birth of Tragedy called Cambridge
Christianity concept culture David Strauss dГѓВ©cadence destiny Dionysian Dionysus dithyramb
divine Duncan Large Ecce Homo essay eternal everything Evil French Friedrich Nietzsche Gay
Science Genealogy ofMorals German Goethe’s Greek hand Heinrich highest hitherto honour
humanity ideal idealist instinct kind Krell London look Mazzino Montinari means millennia Montinari
morality nature never Nietzsche’s Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo one’s oneself opposite
Oxford World’s Classics Parsifal perhaps philosopher poet precisely profound Prussian
psychology published R. J. Hollingdale readers Reading Nietzsche Revaluation Richard Wagner
Sarah Kofman Schopenhauer self-overcoming sense Sils-Maria slightly modified quotation soul
speak spirit Spoke Zarathustra Strauss task things trans translation truth Turin turned Twilight ofthe
Idols understand Untimely Meditations values Wagner in Bayreuth Wagnerian whole Wilhelm
woman word writings yes-saying York Zarathustra
Nietzsche wrote Ecce Homo at the very end of his intellectual career, in the late autumn of 1888,
just a few weeks before his catastrophic collapse into insanity at the beginning of January 1889. It
was his last original work, 1 and the last of his philosophical works to be published when it
eventually appeared in 1908, under the general editorship of his sister. It is customary to describe
Ecce Homo as 'Nietzsche's autobiography' — indeed this was the spurious subtitle used for the first
English translation 2 — and it is a typical autobiography in that it presents the reader with what its
author considers to be the most salient features of his life so far, explaining their significance, but it
is an atypical autobiography in most other respects. If, as a reader, you come to the book in the
expectation of finding anything like a balanced, comprehensive, and objective account of the
philosopher's life, usable for reference purposes, then you will be sorely disappointed. It gives
readers a few milestone dates from which to take their bearings, but these are relatively few and
unevenly dispersed: there are major chronological gaps in the narrative, and a great deal of basic
information which one might legitimately expect to be provided in a biographical account is missing.
To take one noteworthy example, Nietzsche never even tells us directly when he was born, and
instead leaves it to us to reconstruct the date (15 October 1844) from partial information.
In view of the fact that I will shortly have to confront humanity with the heaviest demand ever made
of it, it seems to me essential to say who I am. People ought really to know already: for I have not
failed to 'bear witness' to myself* But the mismatch between the greatness of my task and the
smallness of my contemporaries has been evident in the fact that I have not been heard or even just
seen. I am living on my own credit; perhaps it is merely a prejudice that I am alive at all?... I need
only talk with one or other of the 'educated people' who come to the Upper Engadine* in the summer
to convince myself that I am not alive... Under these circumstances there is a duty against which my
habit, and even more so the pride of my instincts, fundamentally rebels, namely to say: listen to me!
for I am such and such. Above all, don 't mistake me!
I am, for instance, definitely no bogeyman, no moral monster — I am by nature even the opposite
of the type of person who has been admired as virtuous till now. Between ourselves, it seems to me
that that is precisely something I can be proud of. I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus;* I
would prefer to be a satyr rather than a saint. But just read this work. Perhaps I have managed to
express this contrast in a cheerful and benevolent way, perhaps that was the only point of this work.
The last thing / would promise would be to 'improve' humanity. I do not set up any new idols; let the
old ones learn what it means to have legs of clay. Toppling idols (my word for 'ideals') — that is
more my kind of handiwork. Reality has been robbed of its value, its sense, its truthfulness insofar
as an ideal world was faked up. . . The 'real world' and the 'apparent world' — in plain words: the
fake world and reality*. . . The lie of the ideal has till now been the curse on reality; on its account
humanity itself has become fake and false right down to its deepest instincts — to the point of
worshipping values opposite to the only ones which would guarantee it a flourishing, a future, the
exalted right to a future.
Ecce Homo — Anyone who knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that it is an air of
the heights, a bracing air. You must be made for it, or else you are in no little danger of catching
cold in it. The ice is near, the solitude is immense — but how peacefully everything lies in the light!
how freely you breathe! how much you feel to be beneath you! — Philosophy, as I have understood
and lived it so far, is choosing to live in ice and high mountains — seeking out everything alien and
questionable in existence, everything that has hitherto been excluded by morality. From the long
experience which such a wandering in the forbidden gave me, I learnt to view the reasons people
have moralized and idealized so far very differently from what may be wished: the hidden history of
philosophers, the psychology of their great names came to light for me. — How much truth can a
spirit* stand, how much truth does it dare} — for me that became more and more the real measure
of value. Error (belief in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice. . . Every achievement, every
step forwards in knowledge is the consequence of courage, of toughness towards oneself, of
sincerity* towards oneself. . . I do not refute ideals, I just put gloves on to protect myself against
them. . . Nitimur in vetitum:* under this sign my philosophy will triumph one day, for the only thing
that has been altogether forbidden so far is the truth. —
— Among my writings my Zarathustra stands alone. With it I have given humanity the greatest gift it
has ever been given. This book, with a voice that stretches over millennia, is not only the most
exalted book there is, the real book of the mountain air — the entire fact of man lies at a vast
distance beneath it — it is also the most profound book, born of the innermost richness of the truth,
an inexhaustible well into which no bucket descends that does not come back up filled with gold and
goodness. Here speaks no 'prophet', none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power*
called founders of religions. Above all you have to hear properly the tone that comes out of this
mouth, this halcyon tone, if you are not to be pitifully unjust towards the meaning of its wisdom. 'It is
the stillest words that bring on the storm; thoughts that come on doves' feet direct the world — '*
These are not the words of a fanatic, this is not 'preaching', no faith is being demanded here: drop
after drop, word upon word falls from an infinite abundance of light and depth of happiness — the
tempo of these speeches is a delicate slowness. The like of this reaches only the most select; it is a
peerless privilege to be a listener here; no one is at liberty to have ears for Zarathustra. . . Is
Zarathustra with all that not a seducer}. . . But what does he himself say when he returns to his
solitude for the first time? Precisely the opposite of what some 'sage', 'saint', 'world-redeemer', or
other decadent* would say in such a situation... He not only speaks differently, he is just different. . .
On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grapes are turning brown, a shaft
of sunlight has just fallen on my life: I looked backwards, I looked ahead, I never saw so much and
such good things all at once. Not for nothing have I buried my forty-fourth year today;* I was entitled
to bury it — all the life that was in it is saved, is immortal. The Revaluation of All Values* the
Dionysus Dithyrambs, and, by way of recuperation, the Twilight of the Idols — all of them gifts of
this year, even of its last quarter! How should I not be grateful to my whole life? And so I tell myself
my life.
The fortunate thing about my existence, perhaps its unique feature, is its fatefulness:* to put it in the
form of a riddle, as my father I have already died, as my mother I am still alive and growing old. This
twofold provenance, as it were from the top and bottom rungs on the ladder of life, both decadent
and beginning — this, if anything, explains the neutrality, the freedom from bias in relation to the
overall problem of life, that perhaps distinguishes me. I have a finer nose for the signs of ascent and
descent than any man has ever had; I am the teacher par excellence in such matters — I know
both, I am both. — My father died at the age of 36:* he was delicate, kindly, and morbid, like a
being destined only to pass by — more a gracious remembrance of life than life itself. In the same
year as his life declined, mine declined, too: in the thirty-sixth year of my life I reached the nadir of
my vitality — I was still alive, but could not see three steps ahead of me. At that point — it was
1879 — I resigned my professorship in Basle, lived through the summer like a shadow in St Moritz
and the following winter, the least sunny of my life, as a shadow in Naumburg.* This was my
minimum: The Wanderer and his Shadow was produced while it was going on. Without a doubt I
was an expert in shadows in those days. . . The following winter, my first in Genoa, the sweetening
and spiritualization that are more or less bound to result from extreme anaemia and atrophying of
the muscles produced Daybreak. The consummate brightness and cheerfulness, even exuberance
of spirit which this same work reflects can coexist in me not only with the most profound
physiological debility, but even with an excessive feeling of pain. Amid the torments brought on by
three days of unremitting headache accompanied by the arduous vomiting of phlegm, I possessed a
dialectician's clarity par excellence and very cold-bloodedly thought through things for which, in
healthier circumstances, I am not enough of a climber, not cunning, not cold enough. My readers
perhaps know how much I consider dialectics to be a symptom of decadence, for example in the
most famous case of all, the case of Socrates.*
— All sickly disorders of the intellect, even that half-dazed state which follows a fever, have
remained to this day totally alien to me, and I had to teach myself about their nature and frequency
in an academic manner. My blood runs slowly. No one has ever managed to detect a fever in me. A
doctor who treated me for quite a while for a nervous disease ended up saying: 'No! your nerves are
not the problem; I'm the one who's nervous.' No sign at all of any kind of local degeneration; no
stomach complaint for organic reasons, however much the gastric system is profoundly weakened
as a result of general exhaustion. Even the eye complaint, at times verging dangerously on
blindness, just a consequence, not causal: so that with every increase in vitality the eyesight has
picked up again, too. — A long, all-too-long succession of years mean in my case convalescence
— unfortunately they also mean lapsing, relapsing, periodically a kind of decadence. Do I need
say, after all that, that in questions of decadence I am experienced} I have spelt it out forwards and
backwards. Even that filigree art of grasping and comprehending in general, those fingers for
nuances, that psychology of 'seeing round the corner', and whatever else is characteristic of me,
was learnt only then and is the true gift of that time when everything in me was being refined,
observation itself as well as all the organs of observation. Looking from the perspective of the sick
towards healthier concepts and values, and conversely looking down from the fullness and
self-assuredness of rich life into the secret workings of the decadence instinct — this is what I
practised longest, this was my true experience; if I became master of anything then it was of this. I
have my hand in now, I am handy* at inverting perspectives: the foremost reason why for me alone
perhaps a 'revaluation of values' is even possible. —
As summa summarum* I was healthy, as nook, as speciality I was decadent. That energy to achieve
absolute isolation and release from routine circumstances, the pressure on myself forcing me not to
let myself be taken care of, waited on, doctored with any longer — they betray an absolute
instinctual certainty about what, above all, was required at that stage. I took myself in hand, I made
myself healthy again: the prerequisite for this — as every physiologist will concede — is that one
is basically healthy. A typically morbid being cannot become healthy, still less make itself healthy; for
a typical healthy person, conversely, being ill can even be an energetic stimulant to living, to living
more. This, indeed, is how that long period of illness appears to me now: it was as if I discovered life
anew, myself included; I tasted all the good things, even the small ones, as no other could easily
taste them — I turned my will to health, to life, into my philosophy. . . For take note: the years when
my vitality was at its lowest were when I stopped being a pessimist:* the instinct for self-recovery
forbade me a philosophy of poverty and discouragement. . . And basically how do you tell if
someone has turned out well!* By the fact that someone who has turned out well is good for our
senses: the stuff he is made of is at once hard, delicate, and fragrant. Only what he finds conducive
is to his taste; his pleasure, his enjoyment stops when the mark of what is conducive is overstepped.
He guesses correctly what will heal harm, he exploits strokes of bad luck to his advantage; what
does not kill him makes him stronger.* Instinctively he gathers together from everything he sees,
hears, experiences, his aggregate: he is a selective principle, he lets a great deal go. He is always in
his kind of company, whether he is dealing with books, people, or landscapes: he honours by
choosing, by granting admission, by trusting. He reacts to every kind of stimulus slowly, with the
slowness which years of caution and a willed pride have cultivated in him — he examines the
stimulus as it approaches and has no intention of going to meet it. He does not believe in either
'misfortune' or 'guilt': he copes, with himself and with others, he knows how to forget — he is strong
enough for everything to have to turn out for the best with him. — Well then, I am the opposite of a
decadent: for I have just been describing myself.
I consider it a great privilege to have had such a father: the farmers to whom he preached — for
after he had lived several years at the Altenburg court,* in his last years he was a preacher — said
that that was how an angel must look. — And with this I touch on the question of pedigree. I am a
Polish nobleman pur sang* with which not a drop of bad blood is mixed, least of all German blood.
When I look for my profoundest opposite, ineradicable vulgarity of the instincts, I always find my
mother and sister — to think of myself as related to such canaille* would be a blasphemy against
my divinity. The treatment I have experienced at the hands of my mother and sister, right up to this
moment, fills me with unspeakable horror: here a perfectly infernal machine is at work, unerringly
sure of the moment when a bloody wound can be inflicted on me — in my most exalted moments. .
. for at such times one lacks all power to defend oneself against poisonous vermin. . . Physiological
contiguity makes such a disharmonia praestabilita* possible... But I confess that the most profound
objection against the 'eternal recurrence',* my truly abyssal thought, is always mother and sister. —
But even as a Pole I am a tremendous atavism. You would have to go back centuries to find this
race, the noblest there has ever been on earth, quite so instinctually pure as I represent it. I have a
sovereign feeling of distinction compared to everything that is nowadays called noblesse — I would
not grant the young German Kaiser* the honour of being my coachman. There is but one instance
where I acknowledge an equal — I confess it with profound gratitude. Frau Cosima Wagner is by
far the noblest of natures; and so as not to say a word too little, I say that Richard Wagner was the
man who was by far the most closely related to me. . . The rest is silence*. . . All the prevailing
notions about degrees of relatedness are the most outrageous kind of physiological nonsense. The
Pope* is even today trading on such nonsense. You are least related to your parents: it would be the
most extreme sign of vulgarity to be related to one's parents. The higher natures have their origin
infinitely further back; they have had to be collected, saved, accumulated for, for the longest time.*
The great individuals are the oldest: I do not understand it, but Julius Caesar could be my father —
or Alexander, that Dionysus incarnate... At this moment, as I am writing this, the postman brings me
a Dionysus head. . .*
I have never understood the art of taking against me — I have my incomparable father to thank for
that, too — and even when it seemed of great value to me. I have never even taken against myself
— however unchristian that may seem. Examine my life from any angle you like, and you will find
no trace (excepting that one instance)* of anyone having had any ill will towards me — but perhaps
rather too many traces of good will. . . My experiences even with those of whom everyone else has
bad experiences speak without exception in their favour; I tame every bear, I make even the
buffoons mind their manners. In the seven years when I taught Greek to the top class of the
grammar school in Basle,* I never had occasion to impose a punishment; the laziest worked hard for
me. I am always a match for a chance occurrence; I need to be unprepared to be master of myself.
Whatever the instrument — even if it is as out of tune as only the instrument 'man' can go out of
tune — I would have to be ill not to succeed in getting something listenable-to out of it. And how
often have I heard from the 'instruments' themselves that they have never heard themselves
sounding like that. . . The finest example of this was perhaps Heinrich von Stein, who died
unforgivably young: once, after carefully obtaining permission, he turned up in Sils-Maria* for three
days, explaining to everyone that he had not come for the Engadine. For those three days it was as
though this splendid man, who had waded with all the impetuous naivety of a Prussian junker into
the Wagnerian swamp ( — and the Duhringian one, too!), had been transformed by a storm- wind
of freedom, like someone who is suddenly raised up to his height and given wings. I always told him
it was the good air up there that was doing it and everyone was affected in the same way — we
were not 6,000 feet above Bayreuth* for nothing — but he wouldn't believe me...
If nonetheless many a misdeed, large and small, has been perpetrated against me, it was not
because of 'the will', least of all any ill will: as I just indicated, I should rather have to complain about
the good will that has caused me no little trouble in my life. My experiences give me a right to be
thoroughly mistrustful of the socalled 'selfless' drives, of all 'brotherly love'* ready with word and
deed. In itself it strikes me as a weakness, a specific instance of the inability to resist stimuli — only
decadents call compassion a virtue. I hold it against the compassionate that they easily lose sight of
shame, reverence, sensitivity to distances, that in a trice compassion smells of plebs and looks for
all the world like bad manners — that compassionate hands may even wreak utter destruction as
they plunge into a great destiny, an isolation among wounds, a right to a heavy burden of guilt. I
count the overcoming of compassion among the noble virtues: I wrote about one instance as 'The
Temptation of Zarathustra',* when a great cry of distress reaches him and compassion, like one last
sin, wants to ambush him and lure him away from himself. Keeping control here, keeping the heights
of his task untainted by the much baser and more short-sighted impulses at work in the so-called
selfless actions, this is the test, perhaps the last test, a Zarathustra has to pass — the real proof oi
his strength. . .
In another respect, too, I am just being my father once again and, as it were, his continuing life after
an all-too-early death. Like anyone who has never lived among his equals and who has as little
purchase on the concept of 'retaliation' as, for instance, on the concept of 'equal rights', in cases
where a minor or very great act of folly is committed against me I forbid myself any countermeasure,
any protective measure — likewise, as is only proper, any defence, any 'justification'. My kind of
retaliation consists in sending something clever to chase after stupidity as quickly as possible: that
way you may just catch it up. Metaphorically speaking: I send a pot of preserves to get rid of a sour
story. . . One need only do something bad to me and I will 'repay' it, of that one can be sure:
presently I will find an opportunity to express my thanks to the 'wrongdoer' (occasionally even for the
wrongdoing) — or to ask him for something, which can be more obliging than giving something. . .
It seems to me, furthermore, that even the rudest word, the rudest letter is more good-natured, more
honourable than silence. Those who keep quiet almost always lack refinement and heartfelt
courtesy; silence is an objection, swallowing things necessarily makes for a bad character — it
even ruins the stomach. The silent are all dyspeptic. — You can see that I would not want
rudeness to be underestimated; it is by far the most humane form of contradiction and, in the midst
of modern mollycoddling, one of our foremost virtues. — If you are rich enough to deal with it, it is
even a stroke of luck to be wrong. If a god came to earth, he should do nothing but wrong: assuming
not the punishment but the guilt — that would be divine.*
Freedom from resentment,* enlightenment about resentment — who knows what great debt of
gratitude I ultimately owe my long illness in this respect, too! The problem is not exactly simple: you
need to have experienced it from a position of strength and from one of weakness. If anything at all
needs to be counted against being ill, being weak, then it is the fact that in that state the true healing
instinct, in other words the instinct for defence and weapons in man, is worn down. You cannot get
rid of anything, you cannot cope with anything, you cannot fend anything off — everything hurts
you. People and things get intrusively close, experiences affect you too deeply, memory is a
festering wound. Being ill is a kind of resentment itself. — The invalid has only one great remedy
for it — I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without rebellion with which a Russian soldier who
starts finding the campaign too hard finally lies down in the snow. Not taking, taking on, taking in
anything at all any more — no longer reacting at all. . . The great good sense about this fatalism
(which is not always just courage unto death), what makes it life-preserving amidst the most
lifethreatening of circumstances, is the reduction of the metabolism, the slowing of its rate, a kind of
will to hibernation. Take this logic a few steps further and you have the fakir sleeping in a tomb for
weeks on end. . .
Since you would exhaust yourself too quickly z/you reacted at all, you no longer react in any way:
such is the logic. And nothing burns you up faster than the emotions of resentment. Anger, sickly
vulnerability, powerlessness to take revenge, the lust, the thirst for revenge, every kind of poisonous
troublemaking — for the exhausted this is certainly the most detrimental way of reacting: it brings
on a rapid consumption of nervous strength, a sickly intensification of harmful excretions, for
example of bile in the stomach. For the invalid, resentment is the absolute forbidden — his evil:
unfortunately his most natural inclination, too. — This is what that profound physiologist Buddha
understood. His 'religion', which ought rather to be called a hygiene so as not to conflate it with such
wretched things as Christianity, made its effect conditional on defeating resentment: liberating the
soul from that — first step towards recovery. 'Not through enmity does enmity come to an end;
enmity comes to an end through friendship':* this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching —
this is not morality speaking, but physiology. — Resentment, born of weakness, harms no one
more than the weak person himself — or else, when a rich nature is the premise, it is a superfluous
feeling, and to retain mastery over it is practically the proof of richness. Anyone who knows how
seriously my philosophy has taken up the fight against feelings of revenge and reaction, right down
to the doctrine of 'free will' — the fight against Christianity is just a specific instance — will
understand why I am disclosing at this point in particular my personal conduct, my instinctual
certainty in practice. In times of decadence I forbade myself them as harmful; as soon as life was
rich and proud enough once again, I forbade myself them as beneath me. That 'Russian fatalism' of
which I was speaking came to the fore in my own case in that for years I doggedly stuck by almost
unbearable situations, places, lodgings, groups of people, once I had chanced upon them — it was
better than changing them, than feeling them to be changeable, than rebelling against them. . . If I
was disturbed in this fatalism, violently awakened, I was mortally offended in those days — in truth
it was indeed deadly dangerous every time. — Treating oneself as a fate, not wanting oneself to be
'otherwise' — in such circumstances this is great good sense itself.
Another thing is war.* I am naturally warlike. Attacking is one of my instincts. Being able to be an
enemy, being an enemy — these require a strong nature, perhaps; in any case every strong nature
presupposes them. It needs resistances, so it seeks resistance: aggressive pathos* is just as
integrally necessary to strength as the feeling of revenge and reaction is to weakness. Woman, for
instance, is vengeful:* that is a condition of her weakness, as is her sensitivity to other people's
afflictions. — The strength of an attacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; all
growth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent — or problem: for a
philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all
resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one's entire strength, suppleness, and
mastery-at-arms — opponents who are equal... Equality before the enemy — first precondition for
an honest duel. If you despise, you cannot wage war; if you command, if you look down on
something, you do not need to wage war. — My practice of war can be summed up in four
propositions. First: I attack only causes that are victorious — on occasion, I wait till they are
victorious. Second: I attack causes only when there are no allies to be found, when I am standing
alone — when I am compromising myself alone. . . I have never made a move in public that was
not compromising: this is my criterion for right action. Third: I never attack people — I make use of
a person only as a kind of strong magnifying glass with which one can make visible some general
but insidious and quite intangible exigency. This is how I attacked David Strauss,* or more precisely
the success of a decrepit book among the 'educated' in Germany — I caught this education
red-handed. . . This is how I attacked Wagner,* or more precisely the falsity, the instinctual
indistinction of our 'culture', which mistakes the sophisticated for the rich, the late for the great.
Fourth: I attack things only when all personal disagreement is ruled out, when there is no
background of bad experiences. On the contrary, attacking is for me a proof of benevolence, even of
gratitude. By linking my name with that of a cause or a person — whether for or against is
indifferent to me — I honour them, I set them apart. When I wage war on Christianity, I am entitled
to do so because I have not experienced any fatalities or hindrances from that quarter — the most
earnest Christians have always been favourably disposed towards me. I myself, an opponent of
Christianity de rigueur* have no intention of holding against an individual what has been the disaster
of millennia. —
May I make so bold as to intimate one last trait of my nature which causes me no little trouble in my
dealings with people? I have an instinct for cleanliness that is utterly uncanny in its sensitivity, which
means that I can physiologically detect — smell — the proximity or (what am I saying?) the
innermost aspect, the 'innards' of every soul. . . I have psychological feelers attached to this
sensitivity, with which I test every secret by touch and get a grip on it: almost on first contact, I am
already conscious of the large amount of concealed dirt at the bottom of many a nature, perhaps
occasioned by bad blood but whitewashed over by upbringing. If my observations were correct,
natures like this which are unconducive to my cleanliness feel the circumspection of my disgust on
their part, too: it does not make them smell any more pleasant. . . As has always been my custom
— extreme honesty with myself is the prerequisite of my existence; impure conditions are the death
of me — I am constantly swimming and bathing and splashing in water, as it were, in some
perfectly transparent and sparkling element. This makes dealing with people quite a trial of my
patience; my humaneness consists not in sympathizing with someone, but in putting up with the fact
that I sympathize with them... My humaneness is a constant self-overcoming.* — But I need
solitude, in other words convalescence, a return to myself, the breath of free, light, playful air. . . The
whole of my Zarathustra is a dithyramb to solitude, or, if I have been understood,* to purity. . .
— Why do I know a thing or two more} Why am I generally so clever? I have never thought about
questions that are not real ones — I have not squandered myself. — I have no personal
experience, for example, of true religious difficulties. I am entirely at a loss to know how 'sinful' I am
supposed to be. Likewise I have no reliable criterion for what a pang of conscience is: from what
one hears about it, a pang of conscience seems to me unworthy of respect. . . I would not want to
abandon an action after the event; I would prefer to leave the bad outcome, the consequences out
of the question of value altogether. If the outcome is bad, it is all too easy to lose the correct
perspective on what you have done: a pang of conscience seems to me a kind of 'evil eye'.
Cherishing something that goes wrong all the more because it went wrong — that is more my kind
of morality. — 'God', 'immortality of the soul', 'redemption', 'hereafter': all of them concepts to which
I have never paid any attention, or given any time, even as a child* — perhaps I was never childish
enough for them? — Atheism is not at all familiar to me as a result, still less as an event: it is
self-evident to me from instinct. I am too curious, too dubious, too high-spirited to content myself
with a rough-and-ready answer. God is a roughand-ready answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers
— basically even just a rough-and-ready prohibition on us: you shall not think!*. . . In a quite
different way I am interested in a question on which the 'salvation of humanity' depends more than
on any curio of the theologians: the question of nutrition. For ease of use, one can put it in the
following terms: 'how do you personally have to nourish yourself in order to attain your maximum of
strength, of virtu in the Renaissance style,* of moraline-free virtue?'* — In this respect my
experiences are as bad as can be; I am amazed at how late I heard this question, how late I learnt
from these experiences to see 'reason'. Only the complete worthlessness of our German education*
— its 'idealism' — can go some way towards explaining to me why I lagged behind in this of all
respects, to the point of holiness.
Strangely enough, given how extremely easily I am upset by small, heavily diluted doses of alcohol,
I practically turn into a sailor when it comes to strong doses. Even when I was a boy this was my
form of bravery. Writing a long Latin composition, and then even copying it out, in a single all-night
sitting, my pen filled with the ambition to imitate the stringency and concision of my model Sallust,
and steeping my Latin in some of the highest-strength grog — when I was a pupil at the venerable
Schulpforta* this did not contradict my physiology in the slightest, nor even perhaps that of Sallust,
for all that it contradicted the venerable Schulpforta. . . Later on, towards the middle of my life, I of
course set my face more and more strictly against all 'spirituous' drinks: an opponent of
vegetarianism from experience — just like Richard Wagner, who converted me — I cannot
recommend strongly enough to all more spiritual natures absolute abstinence from alcoholic drinks.
Water does the job. . . I prefer places which give you the opportunity everywhere to draw water from
running fountains (Nice, Turin, Sils); a little glass follows me around like a dog. In vino Veritas* it
seems even here I disagree with everyone else once again about the concept of 'truth' — in my
case the spirit moves over water*... A few more hints from my morality. A big meal is easier to digest
than one that is too small. The first prerequisite of good digestion is that the stomach as a whole
should be actively involved. You must know the size of your stomach. Inadvisable for the same
reason are those long-drawn-out meals which I call sacrificial feasts with intermissions, meals at the
table d'hote. — No snacks, no coffee: coffee makes you gloomy. Tea beneficial only in the
morning. A little, but strong; tea is very harmful and makes you feel sickly all day if it is just slightly
too weak. Everyone has his own level here, often between the tightest and most delicate limits. In a
very agafant* climate it is inadvisable to begin with tea: one should lead off with a cup of thick,
oil-less cocoa an hour beforehand. — Sit as little as possible; do not believe any idea that was not
born in the open air and of free movement — in which the muscles do not also revel. All prejudices
emanate from the bowels. — Sitting still (I said it once already) — the real sin against the holy
ghost.* —
Intimately related to the question of nutrition is the question of place and climate. No one is at liberty
to live everywhere, and anyone who has to perform great tasks that call for all his strength has
indeed a very limited choice in this respect. The influence of climate on the metabolism — slowing
it down, speeding it up — is so extensive that a mistake over place and climate can not only
alienate someone from their task but can keep it from them entirely: they never get to see it. They
never have enough animal vigour to achieve the freedom that overflows into the most spiritual
realm, when someone realizes 'Only I can do that'. . . Once even a little sluggishness of the bowels
becomes a bad habit, it is quite enough to turn a genius into something mediocre, something
'German'; the German climate alone is sufficient to discourage strong, even heroically disposed
bowels. The tempo of the metabolism stands in precise relation to the agility or lameness of the
spirit's y^?; the 'spirit' itself is, after all, just a mode of this metabolism. Make a list for yourself of the
places where intelligent people are and have been, where wit, cunning, malice made people happy,
where genius was almost obliged to make its home: all of them have outstandingly dry air. Paris, the
Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens — these names prove something: genius depends on dry
air, on clear skies — in other words on rapid metabolism, on the possibility of supplying oneself
with great, even enormous quantities of strength time and again. I can recall a case where, merely
for want of instinctual subtlety in matters climatic, an eminent and freely disposed spirit became
constricted, crabbed, a specialist and sourpuss. And I myself might ultimately have gone the same
way, had illness not forced me to see sense, to reflect on the good sense in reality. Now that, after
long years of practice, I can read off the effects climate and meteorology have on me as if I were a
very finely calibrated and reliable instrument, and on even a short journey, such as from Turin to
Milan, register the change in humidity through my own physiology, I am horrified to think of the
uncanny fact that my life up till ten years ago — the years of deadly danger — always only played
itself out in places that were wrong and practically forbidden to me.
Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig, Basle — so many hapless haunts for my
physiology. If I have not a single welcome memory of my entire childhood and youth, it would be
foolish to ascribe this to so-called 'moral' causes — such as the indisputable lack of adequate
company: for this lack is there today as it always was, but it does not stop me being cheerful and
brave. No, ignorance in physiologicis* — that confounded 'idealism' — is the real disaster in my
life, the superfluous and stupid part of it, something from which nothing good has grown, which
cannot be compensated for, cannot be offset. I count as consequences of this 'idealism' all my
mistakes, all the great instinctual aberrations and 'modesties' deviating from the task of my life, for
instance my becoming a philologist — why not a doctor, at least, or something else eye-opening?
In my time in Basle my entire spiritual diet, including my daily schedule, was an utterly senseless
abuse of extraordinary energies, without a supply of energies in any way covering the consumption,
without even any reflection on consumption and replacement. There was a complete lack of the
subtler kind of selfishness, of a commanding instinct's care; it was treating oneself as equivalent to
everyone else, a 'selflessness', a forgetting of one's distance — something I will never forgive
myself. When I was almost done for — because I was almost done for — I started to reflect on this
absurdity fundamental to my life — 'idealism'. Illness was what made me see reason. —
One's choice in nutrition, one's choice of climate and place — the third area in which one must
avoid a mistake at all costs is in the choice of one's kind of relaxation. Here, too, the limits on what a
spirit is allowed, in other words what is useful to it, become tighter and tighter the more sui generis it
is. In my case all reading is a relaxation: hence it is one of those things that release me from myself,
that let me stroll among alien sciences and souls — that I stop taking seriously. For reading is a
release from my seriousness. When I am deep in hard work there are no books to be seen around
me: I would take care not to let anyone near me speak or even think. And that is what reading is. . .
Has anyone actually noticed that in that state of profound tension to which pregnancy condemns the
spirit and basically the whole organism, a chance occurrence, any kind of external stimulation has
too violent an effect, 'sinks in' too deep? You have to avoid chance occurrences, external stimuli as
much as possible; a kind of self-immurement is one of the foremost instinctual ruses of spiritual
pregnancy. Shall I allow an alien thought to climb secretly over the wall? — And that is what
reading is. . . After the periods of work and fruitfulness comes the period of relaxation: out you
come, you pleasant, intellectually stimulating books I have been shying away from! — Will they be
German books?... I have to go back half a year to catch myself with a book in my hand. What was it,
though? — An excellent study by Victor Brochard, Les Sceptiques grecs, which puts even my
Laertiana* to good use. The Sceptics* — the only honourable type among the ever-so multiply
ambiguous tribe of the philosophers!. . . Otherwise I resort almost always to the same books —
basically a small number, of those books which have proved themselves for me in particular. It is
perhaps not my nature to read much and widely: reading-rooms make me ill. It is also not my nature
to love much or widely. Circumspection, even hostility towards new books is more of an instinct with
me than 'tolerance', 'largeur du coeur',* and other kinds of 'brotherly love'... A small number of older
Frenchmen are basically the ones I return to again and again: I believe only in French education and
consider everything else that calls itself 'education' in Europe a misunderstanding, not to speak of
German education. . . The few cases of advanced education I discovered in Germany were all of
French extraction, above all Frau Cosima Wagner, by far the foremost voice in questions of taste
that I have heard. . .
The fact that I don't read Pascal but love him, as Christianity's most instructive sacrifice — slowly
murdered, first physically, then psychologically, the whole logic of this most gruesome form of
inhuman cruelty — the fact that I have something of Montaigne's mischief in my spirit — who
knows? perhaps in my body, too — the fact that my artist's taste stands up for the names of
Moliere, Corneille, and Racine not without indignation against a wild genius like Shakespeare: in the
last resort this does not stop me finding even the very latest Frenchmen charming company. I quite
fail to see in what century in history one could fish out such curious yet delicate psychologists as in
the Paris of today: I can name, to take a few examples — for they are by no means small in
number — Messrs Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp,* Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre, or to
highlight one of the strong race, a true Latin of whom I am especially fond, Guy de Maupassant. Just
between ourselves, I even prefer this generation to their great teachers, every last one of whom has
been ruined by German philosophy: Mr Taine, for example, by Hegel, to whom he owes his
misunderstanding of great people and periods. Everywhere Germany extends it ruins culture. Not till
the War* was the spirit 'redeemed'* in France. . . Stendhal, one of the most beautiful coincidences in
my life — for everything momentous in it was always propelled in my direction by chance, never by
a recommendation — is utterly invaluable with his psychologist's anticipatory eye, with his grasp of
what is real that reminds you of the proximity of that most real of men (ex ungue Napoleonem — *);
finally, not least as an honest atheist, a rare species in France and almost impossible to find
(Prosper Merimee be praised). . . Perhaps I am even a little envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of
the best atheist joke, which was just made for me to tell: 'God's only excuse is that he doesn't
exist'... I myself said somewhere:* what has been the greatest objection to existence so far? God...
I was given the most exalted conception of the lyric poet by Heinrich Heine. I seek in vain across all
the realms of millennia for a music that is as sweet and passionate. He possessed that divine malice
without which I am incapable of conceiving perfection — I measure the value of people and races
according to how necessary it is for them to conceive of god and satyr as inseparable. — And how
he handles German! Some day people will say that Heine and I were by far the foremost artists of
the German language — incalculably far beyond everything mere Germans have done with it. — I
must be intimately related to Byron 's Manfred:* I found all these abysses in myself — at 13 I was
ripe enough for this work. I have no words, just a look for those who, in the presence of Manfred,
can dare to utter the word 'Faust'.* The Germans are incapable of any conception of greatness:
witness Schumann.* I myself, incensed at this sugary Saxon, composed a counter-overture to
Manfred, on which Hans von Biilow commented that he had never seen the like on manuscript
paper, that it was a rape of Euterpe.* — If I seek my highest formula for Shakespeare, then I only
ever find this: that he conceived the type of Caesar.* You cannot just guess that kind of thing —
you either are it or you aren't. The great poet creates only by drawing on his own reality* — to the
point where he can no longer stand his work afterwards... Once I have cast a glance at my
Zarathustra, I walk up and down the room for half an hour, overpowered by unbearable cramps
brought on by sobbing. — I know of no more heart-rending reading-matter than Shakespeare: what
must a person have suffered if he needs to be a clown that badly! — Is Hamlet understood}* It is
not doubt but certainty that drives you mad. . . But you need to be profound, abyss, philosopher to
feel that way. . . We are all afraid of the truth. . . And, to make no bones about it: I am instinctively
sure and certain that Lord Bacon is the originator, the animal-self-tormentor* of this uncanniest kind
of literature: what do / care about the pitiable prattle of American muddle-heads and blockheads?*
But the strength to achieve the most powerful realization of one's vision is not only compatible with
the most powerful strength to act, to act monstrously, to commit crime* — it positively requires it. . .
We know far from enough about Lord Bacon, the first realist in every great sense of the word, to
know what all the things he did were, what he wanted, what he experienced... And the devil take
you, my dear critics! Assuming I had baptized my Zarathustra with another's name, for instance that
of Richard Wagner, then it would have taken more than two millennia's worth of acumen to guess
that the author of Human, All Too Human is the visionary of Zarathustra*. . .
Now that I am speaking of the relaxations in my life, I need to say a word to express my gratitude for
what has been by far my most profound and cordial relaxation. Without a shadow of doubt this was
my intimate association with Richard Wagner. It would cost me little to forsake the rest of my human
relationships, but not at any price would I part with the Tribschen* days from my life, days of trust, of
cheerfulness, of sublime coincidences — of profound moments. . . I do not know what experiences
others have had with Wagner: never a cloud passed across our skies. — And with this I return to
France once again — I have no reasons, just a contemptuous corner of my mouth left over for
Wagnerians et hoc genus omne* who think they are doing Wagner an honour by finding that he
resembles them... The way I am — alien to everything German in my most profound instincts, so
that even having a German near me slows down my digestion — my first contact with Wagner was
also the first sigh of relief in my life: I felt and honoured him as a foreign land, as an opposite, as a
protest against all 'German virtues' incarnate. We who were children in the miasma of the fifties are
necessarily pessimistic about the concept 'German'; we can be nothing else but revolutionaries —
we will never acknowledge a state of affairs where the hypocrites are on top. It is a matter of
complete indifference to me whether they go under different guises nowadays, dress in scarlet and
wear hussars' uniforms... Well then! Wagner was a revolutionary — he escaped from the Germans.
. . As an artist one can have no other home in Europe than Paris; the delicatesse* in all five artistic
senses which Wagner's art presupposes, the finger for nuances, the psychological morbidity, is only
to be found in Paris. Nowhere else has this passion in questions of form, this seriousness in
mise-en-scene — it is the Parisian seriousness par excellence. No one in Germany has any idea of
the immense ambition that lives in the soul of a Parisian artist. Germans are good-natured —
Wagner was not in the least good-natured. . .
But I have already said quite enough (in Beyond Good and Evil, 256)* about where Wagner
belongs, who are his closest relations: they are the late Romantics in France, that high-flown and
high-blown kind of artist like Delacroix, like Berlioz, with a fond* of sickness, of incurability in their
being, downright fanatics of expressivity, virtuosos through and through. . . Who was the very first
intelligent follower of Wagner? Charles Baudelaire, who was also the first to understand Delacroix,
that typical decadent in whom a whole generation of artists recognized themselves — he was
perhaps also the last... What have I never forgiven Wagner? That he condescended to the Germans
— that he became Reich German*. . . Everywhere Germany extends it ruins culture. —
All things considered, I could not have endured my youth without Wagner's music. For I was
condemned to live among Germans. To escape from unbearable pressure you need hashish. Well
then, I needed Wagner. Wagner is the counter-poison par excellence for everything German — but
still a poison, I don't deny. . . From the moment there was a piano score of Tristan — my
compliments, Herr von Biilow!* — I was a Wagnerian. Wagner's earlier works I saw as beneath me
— still too vulgar, too 'German'... But even today I am searching for a work that is as dangerously
fascinating, as terribly and sweetly infinite* as Tristan — in all the arts I search in vain. All the
strangenesses of Leonardo da Vinci lose their mystique when the first note of Tristan is sounded.
This work is unquestionably Wagner's non plus ultra; he recovered from it with the Mastersingers
and the Ring* Getting healthier — with a nature like Wagner that is a retrograde step. . . I consider
it a first-rate stroke of luck to have lived at the right time and to have lived precisely among
Germans, in order to be ripe for this work: so pronounced is the psychologist's curiosity in me. The
world is poor for anyone who has never been sick enough for this 'hellish ecstasy': it is permitted, it
is almost imperative to use a mystical formulation here. — I think I know better than anyone else
the immensity of what Wagner can achieve, the fifty worlds of strange delights which no one but he
had the wings to reach; and the way I am — strong enough to turn even the most dubious and
dangerous things to my advantage and thus grow stronger — I call Wagner the greatest benefactor
of my life. What makes us related, the fact that we have suffered more profoundly — from each
other, too — than people of this century could possibly suffer, will for ever reconcile our names; and
just as surely as Wagner is a mere misunderstanding among Germans, so am I and always will be.
— Two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline first, my dear Teutons!. . . But that can't be
caught up. —
— Let me say a little more for the most select of ears: what /really want from music. That it should
be cheerful and profound, like an October afternoon. That it should be independent, lively, tender, a
sweet little woman of treachery and grace. . . I shall never grant that a German could know what
music is. What are called German musicians, the greatest in the van, are foreigners, Slavs, Croats,
Italians, Dutchmen — or Jews; otherwise Germans of the strong race, extinct Germans like
Heinrich Schiitz, Bach, and Handel. I myself am still enough of a Pole* to give up the rest of music
for Chopin: for three reasons I would make an exception of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll* perhaps Liszt
too, who is ahead of all other musicians when it comes to noble orchestral accents, and lastly
everything that has grown up beyond the Alps — this side*. . . I would not know how to do without
Rossini, still less my musical south, the music of my Venetian maestro Pietro Gasti.* And when I say
beyond the Alps, I am really only saying Venice. Whenever I look for another word for music, I
always find only the word 'Venice'. I can make no distinction between tears and music; I do not know
how to imagine happiness, the south, without a shudder of timidity.
In all this — in the choice of nourishment, place and climate, relaxation — an instinct of
self-preservation is in command, expressed most unambiguously as an instinct of self-defence. Not
seeing many things, not hearing them, not allowing them to approach you — first ruse, first proof
that you are no accident but a necessity. The current term for this instinct of self-defence is taste. Its
imperative commands you not only to say 'no' where a 'yes' would be an act of 'selflessness', but to
say 'no ' as little as possible, too. To part with, depart from anything which requires you to say 'no'
time and again. The sense in this is that expenditure on defence, even small amounts, when it
becomes the rule, a habit, entails an extraordinary and utterly needless impoverishment. Our great
expenditures are the most frequent little amounts. Fending off, not allowing to approach, is an
expense — let us make no mistake about this — a strength wasted on negative purposes. Just by
needing always to fend things off, you can grow so weak that you cannot defend yourself any more.
— Let us say I stepped out of the house and found, instead of tranquil and aristocratic Turin, smalltown Germany: my instinct would have to close itself off so as to repress everything forcing itself on
it from this flattened and cowardly world. Or if I found big-city Germany, this edifice of vice where
nothing grows, where everything, good and bad, is dragged in. Would it not mean I would have to
become a hedgehog} — But having quills is a waste, in fact a double luxury when you are free to
have no quills at all, but to be o^w-handed. . .
Another ruse and self-defence consists in reacting as rarely as possible and withdrawing from
situations and conditions in which one would be condemned to hang one's 'freedom', one's initiative
out to dry, so to speak, and become a mere reagent. Let me take as an analogy one's dealings with
books. The scholar, who basically just 'skims' books — on a moderate day the classicist gets
through roughly 200 — ends up completely losing the ability to think for himself. If he does not
skim, he does not think. He responds to a stimulus ( — an idea he has read) when he thinks — he
ends up just reacting. The scholar expends all his strength in saying 'yes' and 'no', in critiquing what
has already been thought — he himself no longer thinks. . . The instinct for self-defence has been
worn down in him; otherwise he would defend himself against books. The scholar — a decadent.
— I have seen it with my own eyes: gifted, rich, and freely disposed natures 'read to rack and ruin'
even in their thirties, just matches that need rubbing to emit sparks — 'thoughts'. — In the early
morning at break of day, when you are at your freshest, at the dawning of your strength, to read a
book — that is what I call depraved!
At this point I can no longer avoid giving the actual answer to the question of how to become what
you are. And with this I touch on the master-stroke in the art of self-preservation — of egoism. . .
For if you assume that your task, your destiny, the fate of your task lies considerably beyond the
average measure, then no danger would be greater than facing up to yourself with this task.
Becoming what you are presupposes that you have not the slightest inkling what you are. From this
point of view even life's mistakes have their own sense and value, the temporary byways and
detours, the delays, the 'modesties', the seriousness wasted on tasks which lie beyond the task.
Here a great ruse, even the highest ruse can be expressed: where nosce te ipsum* would be the
recipe for decline, then forgetting yourself, misunderstanding yourself, belittling, constricting,
mediocritizing yourself becomes good sense itself.
In moral terms: brotherly love, living for other people and things can be a preventative measure for
maintaining the harshest selfishness. This is the exception, when — against my habit and
conviction — I side with the 'selfless' drives: in this case they labour in the service of egoism,
self-discipline* — You need to keep the whole surface of consciousness — consciousness is a
surface — untainted by any of the great imperatives. Beware even every great phrase, every great
pose! With all of them the instinct risks 'understanding itself too soon Meanwhile, in the depths, the
organizing 'idea' with a calling to be master grows and grows — it begins to command, it slowly
leads you back out of byways and detours, it prepares individual qualities and skills which will one
day prove indispensable as means to the whole — it trains one by one all the ancillary capacities
before it breathes a word about the dominant task, about 'goal', 'purpose', 'sense'. — Seen from
this angle my life is simply miraculous. The task of revaluing values required perhaps more
capacities than have ever dwelt together in one individual, above all contradictory capacities, too,
without them being allowed to disturb or destroy one another. Hierarchy of capacities; distance; the
art of separating without creating enemies; not conflating, not 'reconciling' anything; an immense
multiplicity which is nevertheless the opposite of chaos — this was the precondition, the long,
secret labour and artistry of my instinct. Its higher concern was so pronounced that I never even
suspected what was growing within me — that all my abilities would one day suddenly spring forth
ripe, in their ultimate perfection. I lack any memory of ever having exerted myself — there is no
trace of a struggle evident in my life, I am the opposite of a heroic nature. 'Wanting' something,
'striving' for something, having in view a 'purpose', a 'wish' — I know nothing of this from
experience. Even now, I look towards my future — a distant future! — as if it were a smooth sea:
not a ripple of a desire. I have not the slightest wish for anything to be other than it is; I myself do not
want to be different. But this is how I have always lived. I have never wished for anything. Someone
who can say after forty-four years that he has never striven for honours, for women, for money] —
Not that I lacked them...
Thus one day, for example, I was a university professor — never for one moment had I thought of
anything like this, as I was only just 24.* In the same way, two years earlier, I found I was a
philologist one day: in the sense that my teacher Ritschl wanted to have my first philological work,
my beginning in every sense, to print in his Rheinisches Museum* (Ritschl — I say this in
admiration — the only scholar of genius I have ever set eyes on to this day. He possessed that
agreeable corruption that distinguishes us Thuringians and makes even a German likeable — even
to reach the truth we still prefer the roundabout routes. With these words I do not mean at all to
underestimate my close compatriot, clever Leopold von Ranke*. . .)
At this point a great stock-taking is needed. People will ask me why I have talked about all these
little and, according to conventional opinion, trivial things; they will argue that I am doing myself no
favours, all the more so if I am destined to fulfil great tasks. Answer: these little things —
nourishment, place, climate, relaxation, the whole casuistry of egoism — are incomparably more
important than anything that has been considered important hitherto. This is precisely where one
must start relearning. What humanity has hitherto deemed important are not even realities, but
merely illusions, more strictly speaking lies born of the bad instincts of sick natures that are in the
most profound sense harmful — all the concepts 'God', 'soul', 'virtue', 'sin', 'hereafter', 'truth',
'eternal life'. . . But people have looked for the greatness of human nature, its 'divinity', in them. . . All
questions of politics, of social ordering, of upbringing have been thoroughly falsified because the
most harmful people were considered great — because people were taught to despise the 'petty'
things, by which I mean the fundamental matters of life itself. . . Our contemporary culture is
ambivalent to the highest degree. . . The German Kaiser making a pact with the Pope,* as if the
Pope did not represent mortal enmity against life!. . . What is being built today will not be standing in
three years' time. —
If I measure myself against what I can do, not to speak of what follows in my wake, an
unprecedented overturning and rebuilding, then I can stake more of a claim than any other mortal to
the word 'greatness'. If I now compare myself with those who have hitherto been honoured as
foremost among men, then the difference is palpable. I do not even count these so-called 'foremost'
as men at all — for me they are humanity's rejects, hideous combinations of illness and vindictive
instincts: they are nothing but disastrous, fundamentally incurable monsters taking their revenge on
life. . . I want to be the opposite of this: it is my privilege to have the highest sensitivity for all the
signs of healthy instincts. There is not a single sickly trait in my character; even in times of grave
illness I did not become sickly; you will not find a trace of fanaticism in my being. There is not one
moment in my life where you will find any evidence of a presumptuous or histrionic attitude. The
pathos of posturing has no part in greatness; anyone who needs postures at all is false. . . Beware
of all picturesque people! — I found life easy, easiest, when it demanded the most difficult things of
me. Anyone who saw me in the seventy days of this autumn, when, without interruption, I did
nothing but first-rate things which no one will do after me — or before me* — with a sense of
responsibility for all the millennia after me, will have noticed not a trace of tension in me, but rather
an overflowing freshness and cheerfulness. I never felt more agreeable about eating, I never slept
better. — I know of no other way of dealing with great tasks than by playing: as a sign of greatness
this is an important precondition. The slightest constraint, a gloomy expression, some harsh tone in
the throat — these are all objections to a person, so how much more do they count against his
work!... You must have no nerves... Suffering from solitude is an objection, too — I have only ever
suffered from 'multitude'... At an absurdly young age, when I was 7, 1 already knew that no human
word would ever get through to me: did anyone ever see me distressed at this? — Nowadays I am
still as affable to everyone, I am even full of praise for the lowliest: in all of this there is not a jot of
arrogance, of secret contempt. Anyone I despise senses that he is despised by me: by my mere
existence.
I infuriate anything that has bad blood in its body. . . My formula for human greatness is amor fati:*
not wanting anything to be different, not forwards, not backwards, not for all eternity. Not just
enduring what is necessary, still less concealing it — all idealism is hypocrisy in the face of what is
necessary — but loving it. . .
It has led some scholarly blockheads to suspect me of Darwinism;* people have recognized in it
even the 'hero cult' of that great unknowing and reluctant counterfeiter, Carlyle, which I have been
so malicious as to reject.* If I whispered in someone's ear that they should look around for a Cesare
Borgia rather than a Parsifal,* they didn't believe their ears. — You will have to forgive me for not
being in the slightest curious about reviews of my books, especially in newspapers. My friends, my
publishers know about this and don't talk to me of such things. In one particular case I once set eyes
on all the sins that had been committed against a specific book — it was Beyond Good and Evil —
I'd have some charming things to report about that. Can you believe it, that the Nationalzeitung — a
Prussian newspaper, let us note for my foreign readers; I myself, with respect, read only the Journal
des Debats* — thought fit to see the book, in all seriousness, as a 'sign of the times', as the true
and authentic Junker philosop hy, for which the Kreuzzeitung* lacked only the courage?. . .
That was said for the benefit of Germans: for I have readers everywhere else — nothing but the
choicest intelligences, proven characters raised in high positions and duties; I even have true
geniuses among my readers. In Vienna, in St Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Paris
and New York — I have been discovered everywhere: except in Europe's flatland Germany. . .
And, to admit it openly, I am even more pleased about my non-readers, those who have never
heard my name or the word 'philosophy'; but wherever I come to, here in Turin for instance,
everyone's face lights up and softens when they see me. What I have found most flattering so far is
that old women pedlars don't rest till they have found their sweetest grapes for me. That's how far
you need to take being a philosopher. . . Not for nothing are the Poles called the French among the
Slavs.* Not for a moment will a charming Russian woman get confused over where I belong. I just
can't be solemn — it's as much as I can manage to be embarrassed. . . Thinking in a German way,
feeling in a German way — I can do anything, but that is beyond me. . . My old teacher Ritschl
went so far as to claim that I conceived even my philological treatises as a Parisian romancier*
would — in an absurdly exciting manner. In Paris itself people are astounded at 'toutes mes
audaces et finesses'* (the expression is from Monsieur Taine) I am afraid that you will find mixed
into my writings, right up to the most exalted forms of the dithyramb, a little of that salt that never
turns stupid, 'German' — esprit*... I can do no other. God help me! Amen.* — We all know what a
long-ears is, some even know it from experience. Well then, I make so bold as to assert that I have
the tiniest ears. This is of no little interest to the little women — it seems to me that they feel better
understood by me?. . . I am the anti-ass par excellence and hence a world-historic monster — I am,
in Greek, and not only in Greek, the Antichrist. . .
I know my prerogatives as a writer to some extent; in certain cases I even have evidence of how
much it 'ruins' people's taste if they get used to my writings. They simply can no longer stand other
books, least of all philosophy books. It is an unparalleled distinction to step into this noble and
delicate world — for which you must not on any account be a German; ultimately it is a distinction
you need to have earned. But anyone who is related to me through the loftiness of their willing
experiences true ecstasies of learning when they do: for I come from heights to which no bird has
yet flown, I know abysses into which no foot has yet strayed. I have been told it is not possible to let
a book of mine out of one's hands — that I even disturb people's sleep... There is definitely no
prouder and at the same time more refined kind of book: here and there they achieve the highest
thing that can be achieved on earth, cynicism; you must tackle them with the most delicate fingers
as well as with the bravest fists. Every infirmity of the soul rules you out, once and for all, even every
attack of indigestion: you must have no nerves, you must have a cheerful abdomen. Not only the
poverty of a soul but its cramped air rules you out, and all the more so anything cowardly, unclean,
secretly vengeful in the intestines: one word from me drives out all the bad instincts.
I have several guinea-pigs among my acquaintances who allow me to indulge myself in the various
— very instructively various — reactions to my writings. Those who want nothing to do with their
contents, for example my so-called friends, become 'impersonal': they congratulate me on having
'done it' again — and they claim I have made progress with my more cheerful tone. . . The utterly
depraved 'spirits', the 'beautiful souls',* the hypocritical through and through, have absolutely no idea
where to begin with these books — so they consider them to be beneath them, the beautiful logical
consistency of all 'beautiful souls'. The blockheads among my acquaintances — mere Germans, if
you'll excuse my saying so — give me to understand that they don't always share my opinion, but
now and then, for example. . . I have heard this said even about Zarathustra. . . Likewise any
'femininism'* in people, including men, bars the way to me: they will never enter this labyrinth of
daring knowledge. You must never have spared yourself, you must have become accustomed to
harshness to feel high-spirited and cheerful among nothing but harsh truths. If I conjure up the
image of a perfect reader, it always turns into a monster of courage and curiosity, and what's more
something supple, cunning, cautious, a born adventurer and discoverer. Ultimately if I am to say
who are basically the only people I am speaking to, I can't put it any better than did Zarathustra.
Who are the only people he wants to tell his riddle to?
At the same time I'll say something about my art of style in general. Communicating a state, an inner
tension of pathos through signs, including the tempo of these signs — that is the point of every
style; and considering that in my case the multiplicity of inner states is extraordinary, in my case
there are many stylistic possibilities — altogether the most multifarious art of style anyone has ever
had at their disposal. Every style is good that really communicates an inner state, that makes no
mistake with signs, with the tempo of signs, with gestures — all laws governing the rhetorical period
are an art of gesture. Here my instinct is infallible. — Good style in itself — pure folly * mere
'idealism' like, for instance, the 'beautiful in itself \ like the 'good in itself \ like the 'thing in itself \ . .
Always assuming that there are ears — that there are those who are capable and worthy of such a
pathos, that those to whom one may communicate oneself are not lacking. — My Zarathustra, for
example, is still looking for such people in the meantime — oh, he will need to look for a long time
yet! — You must be worthy of hearing him. . . And till then there will be no one to understand the
art that has been squandered here: no one has ever had more new, unprecedented artistic means
to squander — means really created only for this purpose. That such a thing was possible in
German, of all languages, remained to be proven: I myself would have denied it beforehand in the
harshest possible terms. Before me, people did not know what can be done with the German
language — what can be done with language tout court. — The art of grand rhythm, the grand
style of the period expressing an immense rise and fall of sublime, superhuman* passion was first
discovered by me; with a dithyramb like the last in the Third Part of Zarathustra, entitled 'The Seven
Seals', I flew a thousand miles beyond what had hitherto been called poetry.
To give an idea of myself as psychologist, I'll take a curious piece of psychology that appears in
Beyond Good and Evil — incidentally I forbid any speculation as to whom I am describing here.
'The genius of the heart, a heart of the kind belonging to that great secretive one, the tempter god
and born Pied Piper of the conscience whose voice knows how to descend into the underworld of
every soul, who does not utter a word or send a glance without its having a crease and aspect that
entices, whose mastery consists in part in knowing how to seem — and seem not what he is, but
rather what those who follow him take as one more coercion to press ever closer to him, to follow
him ever more inwardly and completely. . . The genius of the heart that silences everything loud and
self-satisfied and teaches it how to listen; that smooths out rough souls and gives them a taste of a
new longing (to lie still, like a mirror, so that the deep sky can mirror itself upon them). . . The genius
of the heart, that teaches the foolish and over-hasty hand to hesitate and to grasp more daintily; that
guesses the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of kindness and sweet spirituality lying under
thick, turbid ice and is a divining rod for every speck of gold that has long lain buried in some
dungeon of great mud and sand. . . The genius of the heart, from whose touch everyone goes forth
the richer, neither reprieved nor surprised, not as if delighted or depressed by another's goodness,
but rather richer in themselves, newer than before, opened up, breathed upon and sounded out by a
warm wind, more unsure, perhaps, more brooding, breakable, broken, but full of hopes that still
remain nameless, full of new willing and streaming, full of new not-willing and back-streaming. . .'*
This beginning is utterly remarkable. I had discovered the only analogy for and counterpart to my
innermost experience that history has to offer — at the same time I was the first to understand the
marvellous phenomenon of the Dionysian.* Likewise my recognizing Socrates as a decadent
provided wholly unambiguous proof of how little the assuredness of my psychological grasp was in
danger from any moral idiosyncrasy — morality itself as a symptom of decadence is an innovation,
a first-rate one-off in the history of knowledge. With these two things, how high had I leapt above the
pitiful blockhead-chatter of optimism versus pessimism! — I was the first to see the real opposition
— degenerating instinct turning against life with subterranean venge fulness ( — its typical forms
Christianity, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, to a certain extent the philosophy of Plato already, all
idealism) and a formula, born of abundance, superabundance, for the highest affirmation, a
yes-saying without reservation, even to suffering, even to guilt, even to everything questionable and
alien about existence. . . This latter, the most joyful, most effusively high-spirited 'yes' to life, is not
only the highest insight, it is also the most profound, the one which is most rigorously confirmed and
sustained by truth and science. Nothing that is can be discounted, nothing can be dispensed with
— indeed, the aspects of existence that are rejected by Christians and other nihilists occupy an
infinitely higher place in the hierarchy of values than what the decadence instinct has seen fit to
sanction, to call 'good'.* To understand this requires courage and, as its prerequisite, a surplus of
strength: for one comes only so close to truth as one's strength allows one's courage to dare
advance. Knowledge, saying 'yes' to reality, is just as much a necessity for the strong as are, for the
weak (inspired by weakness), cowardice and flight from reality — the 'ideal'. . . They are not free to
know: decadents need the lie, it is one of the conditions of their preservation. — Anyone who not
only understands the word 'Dionysian' but understands himself in the word 'Dionysian' has no need
for a refutation of Plato or Christianity or Schopenhauer — he can smell the decay. . .
The extent to which, with this, I had found the concept of 'tragic', the ultimate knowledge of what the
psychology of tragedy is, was given expression recently in Twilight of the Idols: 'Saying yes to life,
even in its strangest and hardest problems; the will to life rejoicing in the sacrifice of its highest types
to its own inexhaustibility — this is what I called Dionysian, this is what I understood as a bridge to
the psychology of the tragic poet. Not freeing oneself from terror and pity, not purging oneself of a
dangerous emotion through a vehement discharge — such was Aristotle's misunderstanding of it*
— but, over and above terror and pity, being oneself the eternal joy of becoming, that joy which
also encompasses the joy of destruction. . .'* In this sense I have the right to see myself as the first
tragic philosopher — which means the polar opposite and antipodes of a pessimistic philosopher.
Before me one doesn't find this transformation of the Dionysian into a philosophical pathos: tragic
wisdom is lacking — I have looked in vain for signs of it even among the great philosophical
Greeks, those who lived in the two centuries before Socrates* I had a lingering doubt about
Heraclitus, in whose vicinity I feel altogether warmer, better disposed than anywhere else. The
affirmation of transience and destruction, the decisive feature of any Dionysian philosophy, saying
'yes' to opposition and war, becoming, with a radical rejection of even the concept of 'being' — in
this I must in any event acknowledge ideas that are more closely related to mine than any that have
hitherto been thought. The doctrine of the 'eternal recurrence', in other words of the unconditional
and infinitely repeated circulation of all things — ultimately this doctrine of Zarathustra's could also
have been taught already by Heraclitus. At least the Stoics, who inherited almost all their
fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show traces of it.* —
Out of this work speaks an immense hope. Ultimately I have no reason to retract my hope in a
Dionysian future for music. Let us glance ahead a century, and let us suppose that my attack on two
millennia of perversity and defilement of the human has been successful. That new party of life
which takes in hand the greatest of all tasks, the breeding of a higher humanity, including the
ruthless destruction of everything degenerating and parasitic, will make possible again that excess
of life on earth from which the Dionysian state, too, must arise once again. I promise a tragic age:
the highest art of saying 'yes' to life, tragedy, will be reborn once humanity has put behind it the
awareness of the harshest but most necessary wars, without suffering from it. . . A psychologist
might add that what I heard in Wagnerian music in my youth has nothing whatsoever to do with
Wagner; that when I was describing Dionysian music I was describing what / had heard — that I
instinctively had to translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit I bore inside me. The proof
of this, as strong a proof as any can be, is my work Wagner in Bayreuth:* in all the psychologically
decisive passages it speaks of me alone — one can ruthlessly put my name or the word
'Zarathustra' wherever the text has the word 'Wagner'. The whole picture of the dithyrambic artist is
the picture of the Zarathustra poet pre-existing, sketched in with abyssal profundity and without even
touching on the Wagnerian reality for a moment. Wagner himself had an inkling of this; he failed to
recognize himself in the work. — Likewise 'the Bayreuth idea' had been transformed into something
which will be no mystery to those who know my Zarathustra: into that great noon-day* when the
most select dedicate themselves to the greatest of all tasks — who knows? the vision of a
celebration I have yet to experience. . . The pathos of the opening pages is world-historic; the gaze
which is mentioned on page 7* is the true gaze of Zarathustra; Wagner, Bayreuth, all the petty
German wretchedness is a cloud in which an unending fata morgana* of the future is reflected. Even
psychologically all the decisive traits of my own nature are invested in Wagner's — the
juxtaposition of the most lucid and most fateful energies, the will to power such as no man has ever
possessed it, ruthless bravery in intellectual matters, boundless energy to learn without it stifling the
will to act. Everything about this work is anticipatory: the closeness of the return of the Greek spirit,
the necessity of Anti-Alexanders to retie the Gordian knot of Greek culture after it was undone*. . .
Just listen to the world-historic emphasis with which, on page 30,* the concept of 'tragic cast of mind'
is introduced: there are nothing but world-historic emphases in this work. This is the strangest kind
of 'objectivity' there can be: an absolute certainty about what I am was projected onto a chance
reality — the truth about myself spoke from a terrifying depth. On page 71* Zarathustra's style is
described and anticipated with trenchant assuredness; and you will never find a more magnificent
expression of the event that is Zarathustra, the immense act of purifying and consecrating humanity,
than is found on pages 43-6.* —
The four Untimelies* are thoroughly warlike. They prove that I was no daydreamer with his head in
the clouds, that it gives me pleasure to draw my rapier — perhaps also that I am dangerously
dexterous. The first attack (1873)* was aimed at German education, which at that stage I was
already looking down on with merciless contempt. No point, no substance, no goal: mere 'public
opinion'. No more pernicious misunderstanding than to think that the Germans' great military
success provided any evidence at all in favour of this education — let alone its victory over France.
. . The second Untimely (1874)* highlights what is dangerous about our kind of scientific endeavour,
what there is in it that gnaws away at life and poisons it — life made z//by this dehumanized
machinery and mechanism, by the '/^personality' of the worker, by the false economy of the 'division
of labour'. The end, culture, is lost — the means, modern scientific endeavour, barbarizes. . . In this
essay the 'historical sense', in which this century takes pride, was recognized for the first time as an
illness, as a typical sign of decay. — In the third and fourth Untimelies* however, as hints towards a
higher conception of culture, towards the restoration of the concept 'culture', two images of the
harshest egoism, self-discipline* are set up, untimely types par excellence, full of sovereign
contempt for everything around them called 'Reich', 'education', 'Christianity', 'Bismarck', 'success'
— Schopenhauer and Wagner or, in one word, Nietzsche. . .
The response came from all sides and by no means just from the old friends of David Strauss,
whom I had ridiculed as the type of German-educated philistinism and smugness, in short as the
author of his barstool-gospel of the 'old faith and the new'* ( — the phrase 'educated philistine'
entered the language through my essay).* These old friends, Wurttembergers and Swabians whom I
had dealt a mortal blow by finding their weird and wonderful animal Strauss funny, responded as
worthily and coarsely as I could have wished; the Prussian retorts were cleverer — they had more
'Prussian blue'* in them. The greatest indecency was perpetrated by a Leipzig paper, the infamous
Grenzboten;* I had difficulty preventing the outraged Baselers from taking steps. Only a few old men
came out unequivocally on my side, for various and to some extent inscrutable reasons. Among
them was Ewald in Gottingen, who intimated that my attack had been the death of Strauss.*
Likewise the old Hegelian Bruno Bauer,* who from then on was one of my most attentive readers. In
his last years he loved making references to me, for example giving Herr von Treitschke, the
Prussian historian, a tip about whose work he could turn to to find out about the concept of 'culture',
which had escaped him. The most thoughtful and also the most extensive comments on the work
and its author came from a former pupil of the philosopher von Baader, a Professor Hoffmann in
Wiirzburg. He foresaw in the work a great destiny for me — ushering in a kind of crisis and highest
decision for the problem of atheism, whose most instinctive and ruthless type he guessed I was.
Atheism was what led me to Schopenhauer. — By far the best heard, the most bitterly felt was an
extraordinarily strong and brave recommendation from the otherwise so unassuming Karl Hillebrand,
the last humane German to wield a pen. His essay was read in the Augsburger Zeitung; you can
read it today, in a somewhat more cautious form, in his collected writings.* Here the work was
presented as an event, a turning-point, a first self-contemplation, the best sign of all, as a real return
of German seriousness and German passion in spiritual matters. Hillebrand was full of high praise
for the form of the work, for its mature taste, for its perfect tact in distinguishing man and matter: he
marked it out as the best polemical work ever written in German — in the art of polemic which for
Germans above all is so dangerous, so inadvisable. Unreservedly affirmative, even intensifying what
I had dared say about the linguistic dilapidation in Germany ( — nowadays they are playing the
purists* and can no longer construct a sentence — ) , with the same contempt for the 'premier
writers' of this nation, he ended by expressing his admiration for my courage — that 'highest form
of courage that puts the very darlings of a people in the dock'... The after-effects of this piece have
been absolutely invaluable in my life. No one has yet picked a quarrel with me. In Germany people
keep quiet, they treat me with a gloomy caution: for years I have made use of an absolute freedom
of speech for which no one nowadays, least of all in the 'Reich', has a free enough hand. For me,
paradise is 'beneath the shade of my sword'... Basically I had put into practice one of Stendhal's
maxims:* his advice is to make one's entry into society with a duel. And what an opponent I had
chosen for myself! the first German free-thinker!. . . In fact a completely new kind of free-thinking
was finding its first expression here: to this day nothing is more alien and unrelated to me than the
whole European and American species of 'libres penseurs'.* I am even more profoundly at odds with
these incorrigible blockheads and buffoons, with their 'modern ideas', than I am with any of their
opponents. They, too, want to 'improve' humanity in their way, in their image; they would wage
implacable war on what I am, what I want, if they only understood it — to a man they all still believe
in the 'ideal'. . . I am the first immoralist —
I would not want to claim that the two Untimelies that bear the names of Schopenhauer and Wagner
might be any particular help in understanding or even just psychologically questioning the two cases
— except in one or two respects, as is only proper. Thus, for example, with a profound instinctual
assuredness what is elemental in Wagner's nature is already described here as a histrionic talent
which is simply being logically consistent in its means and aims. With these works I basically wanted
to do something quite different from psychology — an unparalleled problem of education, a new
concept of self-discipline, of self-defence to the point of harshness, a path to greatness and to
world-historic tasks was clamouring for its first expression. Broadly speaking I seized two famous
and still utterly undetermined types with both hands, as you seize an opportunity with both hands, in
order to express something, to have a few more formulations, signs, linguistic means in hand. After
all, with quite uncanny sagacity the third Untimely also indicates this on p. 93.* This is how Plato
used Socrates, as a semiotic for Plato. — Now that I am looking back from some distance on the
circumstances to which these works bear witness, I would not want to deny that they basically speak
only of me. The work Wagner in Bayreuth is a vision of my future, while Schopenhauer as Educator
bears my innermost history, my becoming inscribed within it. Above all my vowl. . . What I am today,
where I am today — at a height where I no longer speak with words but with lightning bolts — oh
how far away I still was then! — But I could see the land* — not for one moment did I deceive
myself about the path, sea, danger — and success! The great calmness in promising, this blessed
peering out into a future which is not to remain a mere promise! — Here every word is experienced,
profound, inward; there is no lack of the most painful things, there are words in here that are
positively bloodthirsty. But a wind of great freedom blows across everything; even the wound does
not serve as an objection. — How I understand the philosopher, as a terrible explosive which puts
everything in danger,* how I set my concept of 'philosopher' miles apart from a concept which
includes even a Kant, not to speak of the academic 'ruminants' and other professors of philosophy:
this work gives invaluable instruction in all this, even granted that it is basically not 'Schopenhauer
as Educator' but his opposite, 'Nietzsche as Educator', who is given a chance to speak here. —
Considering that mine was a scholar's trade at the time, and perhaps that I understood my trade,
too, then an austere aspect of the psychology of the scholar that suddenly comes to light in this
work is not without significance: it expresses the feeling of distance, the profound certainty about
what in me can be my task, what merely my means, intermission, and incidental accomplishment. It
is my kind of cleverness to have been many things and in many places, so as to be able to become
one thing — to be able to come to one thing. I had to be a scholar, too, for a while. —
Human, All Too Human is the monument to a crisis. It calls itself a book for free spirits:* practically
every sentence in it expresses a victory — with it I liberated myself from what in my nature did not
belong to me. Idealism does not belong to me: the title says 'where you see ideal things, / see —
human, oh just all-too-human things!'... I know man better... — There is no other way for the phrase
'free spirit' to be understood here: a spirit that has become free, that has seized possession of itself
again. The tone, the timbre is completely different: people will find the book clever, cool, perhaps
harsh and mocking. A certain intellectuality of noble taste seems to be continually keeping the upper
hand over a more passionate current beneath it. In this context it makes sense that it is actually the
hundredth anniversary of the death of Voltaire which provides the excuse, so to speak, for the
publication of this book as early as 1878.* For Voltaire, in contrast with everyone who wrote after
him, is above all a grandseigneur* of the spirit: precisely what I am, too. — The name Voltaire on a
work of mine — that really was progress — towards myself. . . If you look more closely, then you
discover a merciless spirit who knows all the hiding-places where the ideal has its home — where it
has its dungeons and its last safe retreat, as it were. With a torch in its hands casting an unwavering
light, with piercing brightness it illuminates this underworld of the ideal. It is war, but war without
powder or smoke, with no warlike poses, no pathos or contorted limbs — all this would itself still be
'idealism'. One error after another is calmly put on ice; the ideal is not refuted — it dies of exposure.
. . Here, for example, 'the genius' is freezing; a long way further on freezes 'the saint'; beneath a
thick icicle 'the hero' is freezing; in the end 'belief, so-called 'conviction' freezes, even 'pity' is
growing considerably cooler — almost everywhere 'the thing in itself is freezing to death. . .
The beginnings of this book can be found amid the weeks of the first Bayreuth Festival;* a profound
sense of alienation from everything that surrounded me there was one of its preconditions. Anyone
who has an idea of the kind of visions that had already crossed my path by that stage can guess
how I felt when I woke up one day in Bayreuth. Just as if I was dreaming. . . But where was I? I
recognized nothing, I hardly recognized Wagner. I leafed through my memories in vain. Tribschen
— a distant isle of the blest: not the slightest similarity. The incomparable days of the laying of the
foundation stone,* the little group who belonged there, who celebrated it and on whom you did not
have first to wish the fingers for delicate things: not the slightest similarity. What had happened? —
They had translated Wagner into German! The Wagnerian had become master over Wagner! —
German art! the German master! German beer!... We others, who know only too well the refined
artists, the cosmopolitanism of taste to which only Wagner's art speaks, were beside ourselves at
finding Wagner decked out with German 'virtues'. — I think I know the Wagnerian, I have
'experienced' three generations, starting with the late Brendel, who confused Wagner with Hegel,
and going right up to the 'idealists' of the Bayreuther Blatter* who confuse Wagner with themselves
— I have heard all kinds of confessions of 'beautiful souls' about Wagner. A kingdom for one
sensible word!* — A truly hair-raising group! Nohl, Pohl, Kohl with grace ad infinitum!* No deformity
lacking from their number, not even the anti-Semite. — Poor Wagner! Where had he ended up! —
If he had only gone among swine,* at least! But among Germans!... For the instruction of posterity
they ought finally to stuff a genuine Bayreuther, better still embalm him in spirit, for spirit is what's
lacking — with the caption: this is what the 'spirit' looked like on which the 'Reich' was founded. . .
Enough: in the midst of all this I headed off for a few weeks, very suddenly, despite the fact that a
charming Parisian woman* tried to console me; I made my excuses to Wagner with just a fatalistic
telegram. In a spot buried away deep in the Bavarian Forest, Klingenbrunn, I carried my melancholy
and contempt for Germans around with me like an illness — and wrote a sentence in my notebook
from time to time, under the general heading of 'The Ploughshare', nothing but harsh psychologica,
which can perhaps still be rediscovered in Human, All Too Human.
The decision that was taking shape in me at that time was not just a break with Wagner — I was
registering a general aberration of my instinct, and individual mistakes, whether Wagner or my
professorship in Basle, were only a sign. I was overcome by an impatience with myself; I realized it
was high time to reflect on myself. All at once it became terribly clear to me how much time had
already been wasted — how useless, how arbitrary my whole philologist's existence appeared
when set against my task. I was ashamed of this false modesty. . . Ten years behind me when quite
simply the nourishment of my spirit had been at a standstill, when I had learnt nothing more that was
usable, when I had forgotten a ridiculous amount about a hotchpotch of fusty erudition. Crawling
through ancient metricians with meticulous precision and bad eyes — things had got that bad with
me! — With a look of pity I saw how utterly emaciated I was, how I had wasted away: realities were
entirely lacking within my knowledge, and the 'idealities' were worth damn all! — I was gripped by a
really burning thirst: from then on, indeed, I pursued nothing but physiology, medicine, and natural
science — I returned even to truly historical studies only when my task compelled me imperiously
to do so. That was also when I first guessed the connection between an activity chosen contrary to
one's instinct, a so-called 'profession', to which one is called last of all * and that need to have one's
feeling of emptiness and hunger anaesthetized through narcotic art — for example through
Wagnerian art. When I looked around me more carefully I discovered that a large number of young
men face the same crisis: one perversity positively compels a second. In Germany, in the 'Reich', to
be quite explicit, all too many are doomed to make up their minds inopportunely and then, beneath a
burden they can no longer shed, waste away. . . They demand Wagner like an opiate — they forget
themselves, they lose themselves for a moment. . . What am I saying! for five or six hours\ —
At that stage my instinct decided implacably against yet more giving way, going along with things,
mistaking myself. Any kind of life, the most unfavourable conditions, illness, poverty — anything
seemed to me preferable to that unworthy 'selflessness' which I had entered into at first from
ignorance, from youth, and in which I later got bogged down from inertia, so-called 'feelings of
obligation'. — Now that bad inheritance from my father's side came to my assistance in a way I
cannot admire enough, and just at the right time — basically a predestination to an early death.
Illness slowly released me: it saved me from making any break, from taking any violent, offensive
step. I lost no one's good-will at that point, and indeed gained many people's. Likewise illness gave
me the right to completely overturn all my habits; it allowed me, compelled me to forget; it bestowed
on me the gift of having to lie still, remain idle, wait, and be patient. . . But that is what thinking is!. . .
All by themselves my eyes put an end to all bookwormery, otherwise known as philology: I was
released from the 'book', and read nothing more for years — the greatest favour I have ever done
myself! — That nethermost self, as if buried alive, as if made mute beneath the constant need to
pay heed to other selves ( — which is what reading is!) awoke slowly, shyly, hesitantly — but
finally it spoke again. I have never been so happy with myself as in my life's periods of greatest
illness and pain: you need only take a look at Daybreak or The Wanderer and His Shadow to
understand what this 'return to myself was: the highest kind of recuperation]... The other kind simply
followed on from this. —
Human, All Too Human, that monument to a rigorous self-discipline, with which I swiftly dispatched
all the 'higher swindle', 'idealism', 'fine feeling', and other femininities I had brought in, was written
down in all essentials in Sorrento; it was finished off and given its final form during a winter in Basle
under much less favourable circumstances than those in Sorrento. Basically it is Mr Peter Gast, at
that time studying at Basle University and very devoted to me, who has the book on his conscience.
I dictated, my head bandaged up and in pain; he copied out and made corrections, too — basically
he was the actual writer, while I was just the author. When I finally got my hands on the finished
book — to the great amazement of a seriously ill man — I sent two copies to Bayreuth among
other places. By a miraculously meaningful coincidence a beautiful copy of the text of Parsifal
reached me at the same time, with Wagner's dedication to me, 'his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche,
Richard Wagner, Church Councillor'. — This crossing of the two books — it seemed to me as if I
heard them make an ominous sound. Did it not sound like the clash of rapiers?. . . At any rate that is
how we both felt: for we both said nothing. — Around this time the first Bayreuther Blatter
appeared: I realized what it had been high time for. — Incredible! Wagner had become pious. . .
How I was thinking about myself at that time (1876), with what immense assuredness I had my task
and its world-historic aspects in hand, the whole book bears testimony to this, but in particular one
very explicit passage:* except that here, too, with my instinctive cunning, I avoided using the little
word T and this time illuminated with world-historic glory not Schopenhauer or Wagner but one of
my friends, the excellent Dr Paul Ree — fortunately much too refined an animal to. . . Others were
less refined: I could always tell the hopeless cases among my readers, for instance the typical
German professor, by the fact that on the basis of this passage they thought they had to understand
the whole book as higher Reealism. . . In truth it contained the contradiction of five or six sentences
of my friend's: for this, read the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morals. — The passage reads: 'but
what is the main principle that has been arrived at by one of the boldest and coolest thinkers, the
author of the book On the Origin of Moral Sensations (lisez:* Nietzsche, the first immoralist), by
means of his incisive and penetrating analyses of human behaviour? "The moral individual is no
closer to the intelligible world than to the physical one — for there is no intelligible world. . ." This
principle, hardened and sharpened under the hammer blows of historical knowledge (lisez:
revaluation of all values), may perhaps at some future point — 1890! — serve as the axe which
will be applied to the roots of humanity's "metaphysical need" — whether more as a blessing or a
curse on humanity, who can say? But in any event as a principle with the most significant
consequences, at once fruitful and fearful, and looking into the world with the double vision that all
great insights have'...
With this book my campaign against morality begins. Not that it has the slightest whiff of gunpowder
about it: provided you have some sensitivity in your nostrils you will smell something quite different
and much sweeter about it. No big guns or even small ones: if the book's effect is negative, then its
means are so much less so, these means from which the effect follows like a conclusion, not like a
cannon shot.* The fact that you take your leave of the book shyly wary of everything that has
hitherto been honoured and even worshipped under the name of morality is perfectly consistent with
the fact that there is not a negative word to be found in the entire book, no attack, no malice — that
instead it lies in the sun, plump, happy, like a sea creature sunning itself among rocks. Ultimately I
was myself this sea creature: practically every sentence in the book was conceived, hatched in that
riot of rocks near Genoa, where I was on my own and still had secrets to share with the sea. Even
now, if I encounter the book by chance, practically every sentence becomes a tip with which I can
pull up something incomparable from the depths once again: its whole hide quivers with the tender
shudders of recollection. It excels at the not inconsiderable art of making things which dart by lightly
and noiselessly, moments I call divine lizards, stay still a little — not, though, with the cruelty of that
young Greek god who simply skewered the poor little lizard,* but nevertheless with something sharp,
with my pen. . . 'There are so many dawns that have not yet broken'* — this Indian motto is
inscribed on the door to this book. Where does its originator seek that new morning, that still
undiscovered delicate blush with which another day — ah, a whole series, a whole world of new
days! — sets in? In a revaluation of all values, in freeing himself from all moral values, in saying
'yes' to and placing trust in everything that has hitherto been forbidden, despised, condemned. This
yes-saying book pours out its light, its love, its delicacy over nothing but bad things, it gives them
back their 'soul', their good conscience, the lofty right and prerogative of existence. Morality is not
attacked, it just no longer comes into consideration... This book closes with an 'Or?' — it is the only
book to close with an 'Or?'. . .
My task, that of preparing the way for a moment of highest selfcontemplation on humanity's part, a
great noon-day when it will look back and look ahead, when it will step out from under the
dominance of chance and the priests and for the first time ask the question 'why?' 'what for?' as a
whole — this task follows necessarily from the insight that humanity has not found the right way by
itself, that it is definitely not divinely ruled but that precisely among its holiest conceptions of value
the instinct of negation, of corruption, the decadence instinct has seductively held sway. This is why
the question of the origin of moral values is for me a question of the utmost importance, because it
determines the future of humanity. The requirement to believe that everything is basically in the best
hands and that one book, the Bible, gives conclusive reassurance about the divine direction and
wisdom in the destiny of humanity is, if you translate it back to reality, the will to suppress the truth
about the pitiful opposite, namely that humanity has so far been in the worst hands, that it has been
ruled by those who turned out badly, the cunningly vindictive, the so-called 'saints', these
world-slanderers and humanity-defilers. The crucial sign that the priest ( — including those hidden
priests, the philosophers) has become dominant not just within a particular religious community but
overall, that decadence morality, the will to the end, passes for morality as such, is the absolute
value bestowed on what is unegoistic and the hostility faced everywhere by what is egoistic. I
consider anyone who does not agree with me on this point to be infected. . . But the whole world
disagrees with me. . . Such a clash of values leaves a physiologist in no doubt whatsoever. Once
the most minor organ in an organism so much as begins to neglect to pursue its self-preservation,
its energy renewal, its 'egoism' with perfect assuredness, then the whole thing degenerates. The
physiologist demands that the degenerating part be excised, he denies any solidarity with what is
degenerating, he is at the furthest remove from sympathizing with it. But the degeneration of the
whole, of humanity, is precisely what the priest wants: this is why he preserves what is degenerating
— this is the price he pays for dominating it. What is the point of those mendacious concepts,
morality's ancillary concepts 'soul', 'spirit', 'free will', 'God', if not to bring about humanity's
physiological ruin?. . . If you distract from the seriousness of the self-preservation, the energy
increase of the body, in other words of life, if you construct an ideal out of anaemia, 'the salvation of
the soul' out of contempt for the body, what else is that if not a recipe for decadence — Loss of
weightiness, resistance to natural instincts, in one word 'selflessness' — this is what has been
called morality till now. . . With Daybreak I first took up the struggle against the morality of unselfing
oneself. * —
Daybreak is a yes-saying book, profound but bright and generous. The same is true once again and
to the highest degree of the gay a scienza: in almost every sentence here profundity and mischief
go tenderly hand in hand. A verse which expresses gratitude for the most marvellous month of
January I have ever experienced — the whole book is its gift — reveals only too well the depths
from which 'science' has become gay here:
Who can have any doubts about what is meant here by 'highest hope' when they see the
adamantine beauty of Zarathustra's first words shining out at the conclusion of the fourth book?* —
Or when they read, at the end of the third book, the granite sentences with which a destiny for all
time is first formulated? — The 'Songs of Prince Vogelfrei', for the most part composed in Sicily,
quite explicitly call to mind the Provencal notion of 'gaya scienza', that unity of singer, knight, and
free-thinker which distinguishes the marvellous early culture of the Provencal people from all
ambiguous cultures; the very last poem in particular, 'To the Mistral', a boisterous dancing song
which — if I may! — dances above and beyond morality, is a perfect Provencalism. —
I know of no better, no more personal way to explicate this concept than the way in which I already
have done, in one of the final paragraphs of the fifth book of the 'gaya scienza '. There it says: 'We
who are new, nameless, hard to understand, we premature births of a yet unproven future, we
require for a new end a new means, too, namely a new health, one that is stronger, craftier, tougher,
bolder, merrier than all healths have been so far. Anyone whose soul thirsts to have experienced the
entire compass of previous values and desiderata and to have circumnavigated the entire coastline
of this "Mediterranean" of the ideal, anyone who wants to know from the adventures of his ownmost
experience how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of the ideal, likewise to be an artist, a
saint, a legislator, a sage, a scholar, a pious man, an old-style religious hermit: for this he is in need
of one thing above all else, great health — of the kind you not only have but also still constantly
acquire and have to acquire because time and again you give it up, have to give it up... And now
that we have long been under way in this fashion, we Argonauts* of the ideal, more courageous
perhaps than is sensible and often enough shipwrecked and damaged but, to repeat, healthier than
we might be permitted to be, dangerously healthy, time and again healthy — it appears to us that,
as a reward, we have an as yet undiscovered land ahead of us, whose borders no man has yet
descried, a land beyond all previous lands and corners of the ideal, a world so over-rich in what is
beautiful, alien, questionable, terrible, and divine that our curiosity as well as our thirst for
possession are beside themselves — ah, henceforth we are insatiable!. . . How could we, after
such prospects and with such a ravenous hunger in our knowledge and conscience, still be satisfied
with present-day man} It is bad enough, but unavoidable, that we now observe his most worthy
objectives and hopes with a seriousness that is difficult to maintain, and perhaps no longer even
look. . . A different ideal runs on ahead of us, a wondrous, tempting ideal rich in dangers, which we
would not want to persuade anyone to adopt, because we grant no one the right to it so easily: the
ideal of a spirit who plays naively, in other words without deliberation and from an overflowing
plenitude and powerfulness, with everything that has hitherto been called holy, good, untouchable,
divine; for whom the highest thing which the people naturally enough take as their yardstick of value
would mean something like danger, decay, abasement, or at least recuperation, blindness,
temporary self-forgetting; the ideal of a human-over-human well-being and benevolence which will
often enough appear inhuman, for instance when it sets itself up beside all previous earthly
seriousness, beside all previous solemnity in gesture, word, tone, glance, morality, and task as the
very incarnation of its unintentional parody — and with which, in spite of all that, perhaps the great
seriousness at last begins, the true question-mark is at last set down, the destiny of the soul
changes direction, the hand on the clock moves round, the tragedy begins. . .'*
— Does anyone, at the end of the nineteenth century, have a clear idea of what poets in strong
ages called inspiration} If not, then I'll describe it. — With the slightest scrap of superstition in you,
you would indeed scarcely be able to dismiss the sense of being just an incarnation, just a
mouthpiece, just a medium for overpowering forces. The notion of revelation — in the sense that
suddenly, with ineffable assuredness and subtlety, something becomes visible, audible, something
that shakes you to the core and bowls you over — provides a simple description of the facts of the
matter. You hear, you don't search; you take, you don't ask who is giving; like a flash of lightning a
thought flares up, with necessity, with no hesitation as to its form — I never had any choice. A
rapture whose immense tension is released from time to time in a flood of tears, when you cannot
help your step running on one moment and slowing down the next; a perfect being-outside-yourself*
with the most distinct consciousness of myriad subtle shudders and shivers right down to your toes;
a depth of happiness where the most painful and sinister things act not as opposites but as
determined, as induced, as a necessary colour within such a surfeit of light; an instinct for rhythmic
conditions that spans wide spaces of forms — length, the need for a rhythm with a wide span is
practically the measure of the power of the inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and
tension. . . Everything happens to the highest degree involuntarily, but as if in a rush of feeling free,
of unconditionality, of power, of divinity. . . The involuntariness of images and analogies is the most
remarkable thing; you lose your sense of what is an image, what an analogy; everything offers itself
as the nearest, most correct, most straightforward expression. It really seems — to recall a phrase
of Zarathustra's — as though the things themselves were stepping forward and offering themselves
for allegorical purposes ( — 'here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you: for
they want to ride on your back. On every allegory you ride here to every truth. Here the words and
word-shrines of all Being spring open for you; all Being wants to become word here, all Becoming
wants to learn from you how to talk — '*). This is my experience of inspiration; I have no doubt that
you need to go back millennia in order to find someone who can say to me 'it is mine, too'. —
Afterwards I lay ill for a few weeks in Genoa. This was followed by a melancholy spring in Rome,
when I put up with life — it was not easy. Basically I was irritated beyond measure by this most
unconducive place on earth for the poet of Zarathustra, which I had not chosen voluntarily; I tried to
get away — I wanted to go to Aquila, the counter-concept to Rome, founded out of enmity towards
Rome, as I shall one day found a place in memory of an atheist and enemy of the church comme
ilfaut* one who is most closely related to me, the great Hohenstaufen emperor Friedrich II.* But
there was a fatality about all this: I had to come back again. In the end I contented myself with the
Piazza Barberini, after my efforts to find an anti-Christian locality had tired me out. I am afraid that
once, so as to avoid bad smells as much as possible, I even asked at the Palazzo del Quirinale*
whether they might not have a quiet room for a philosopher. — On a loggia high above the said
piazza, from which you look out over all Rome and hear the fontana playing far below, that loneliest
ever song was composed, the 'Night-Song';* around this time I was always accompanied by a
melody of ineffable melancholy, whose refrain I recognized in the words 'dead from immortality. . .'.
In the summer, returning home to the sacred spot where the first lightning-bolt of the thought of
Zarathustra had flashed before me, I found the Second Part of Zarathustra. Ten days were enough;
in no case — whether with the first or with the third and last part* — did I need more. The following
winter, beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which shone into my life for the first time at that stage, I
found the Third Part of Zarathustra — and was finished. Scarcely a year needed for the whole.
Many hidden spots and high-spots from the landscape of Nice have been consecrated for me by
unforgettable moments; that crucial part which bears the title 'On Old and New Tablets'* was
composed during the most laborious ascent from the station to the wonderful Moorish mountain lair
of Eza — my muscular agility has always been at its greatest when my creative energy is flowing
most abundantly. The body is inspired: let's leave the 'soul' out of it. . . I could often be seen
dancing;* in those days I could be walking around on mountains for seven or eight hours without a
trace of tiredness. I slept well and laughed a lot — I was the epitome of sprightliness and patience.
Aside from these works often days the years during and, above all, after Zarathustra were ones of
unparalleled crisis. You pay dearly for being immortal: it means you die numerous times over the
course of your life. — There is something I call the rancune* of the great: everything great, be it a
work or a deed, once it has been accomplished, immediately turns against whoever did it. By virtue
of having done it, he is now weak — he can no longer endure his deed, can no longer face up to it.
To have something behind you that you should never have wanted, something that constitutes a
nodal point in the destiny of humanity — and from then on to have it on top of you].. . It almost
crushes you... The rancune of the great! — Another thing is the terrible silence you hear around
you. Solitude has seven skins; nothing gets through any more. You come to people, you greet
friends: a new wilderness; no one greets you with their gaze any more. At best a kind of revolt. I
experienced such a revolt, to very varying degrees but from almost everyone close to me; it seems
that nothing causes more profound offence than suddenly letting a distance be remarked — the
noble natures who do not know how to live without honouring are rare. — A third thing is the
absurd sensitivity of the skin to little stings, a kind of helplessness in the face of every little thing.
This seems to me to result from the immense squandering of all one's defensive energies which
every creative deed, every deed that derives from one's ownmost, innermost depths has as its
precondition. This means that the little defensive capacities are, in a manner of speaking,
suspended; no energy flows to them any more. — I might yet venture to suggest that one's
digestion is worse, one moves about unwillingly, one is all too exposed to frosty feelings and
mistrust, too — which in many cases is merely an aetiological error. In such a state I once sensed
the proximity of a herd of cows even before I saw it, prompted by the return of milder, more
philanthropic thoughts: they have a warmth about them. . .
This work stands entirely on its own. Let us leave the poets aside: absolutely nothing has ever been
achieved, perhaps, from a comparable surfeit of strength. My concept of 'Dionysian' became the
highest deed here; measured against it, all the rest of human action appears poor and limited. The
fact that a Goethe, a Shakespeare would not be able to breathe for a moment in this immense
passion and height, that Dante, compared with Zarathustra, is just one of the faithful and not one
who first creates the truth, a world-governing spirit, a destiny — that the poets of the Veda* are
priests and not even worthy of unfastening a Zarathustra's shoe-latches, this is all the very least that
can be said and it gives no conception of the distance, the azure blue solitude in which this work
lives. Zarathustra has an eternal right to say: 'I draw circles around myself and sacred boundaries;
fewer and fewer climb with me upon ever higher mountains — I build a mountain-range from ever
more sacred mountains.'* If you roll into one the spirit and the goodness of all great souls, all of
them together would not be capable of producing a single speech of Zarathustra's. Immense is the
ladder on which he climbs up and down; he has seen further, willed further, achieved further than
any man. He contradicts with every word, this most affirmative of all spirits; in him all opposites are
fused together into a new unity. The highest and the lowest powers of human nature, that which is
sweetest, airiest, and most fearsome pours forth from a single spring with immortal assuredness. Till
that point people do not know what height and depth are; still less do they know what is truth.* There
is not a moment in this revelation of truth that might already have been anticipated or guessed by
one of the greatest. There is no wisdom, no soul-study,* no art of speaking before Zarathustra; what
is nearest, most everyday speaks here of unprecedented things. Aphorisms quivering with passion;
eloquence become music; lightning-bolts hurled on ahead towards hitherto unguessed-at futures.
The mightiest power of analogy that has yet existed is feeble fooling compared to this return of
language to its natural state of figurativeness.* — And how Zarathustra descends and says the
kindest things to everyone! How he tackles even his adversaries, the priests, with delicate hands
and suffers from them with them! — Here man is overcome at every moment; the concept of
'overman' has become the highest reality here — everything that has hitherto been called great
about man lies at an infinite distance below him. The halcyon tone, the light feet, the omnipresence
of malice and high spirits and everything else that is typical of the type Zarathustra has never been
dreamed of as essential to greatness. Precisely in this extent of space, in this ability to access what
is opposed, Zarathustra feels himself to be the highest of all species of being; and when we hear
how he defines it, we will dispense with searching for his like.
But that is the concept of Dionysus himself. — This is precisely the direction in which a further
consideration also leads. The psychological problem about the type of Zarathustra is how one who
to an unprecedented degree says 'no', does 'no' to everything people previously said 'yes' to, can
nevertheless be the opposite of a no-saying spirit; how the spirit that bears the weightiest of
destinies, a fatality of a task, can nevertheless be the lightest and most otherworldly — Zarathustra
is a dancer — how one who has the harshest, most terrible insight into reality, who has thought the
'most abyssal thought', nevertheless finds in it no objection to existence, or even to the eternal
recurrence of existence — but rather yet another reason to be himself the. eternal 'yes' to all things,
'the enormous and unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying'*. . . 'Into all abysses I carry my blessing
Yea-saying'*. . . But that is the concept of Dionysus once again.
— What language will such a spirit speak when it talks to itself alone? The language of the
dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb. Just listen to how Zarathustra talks to himself 'Before
the Sunrise': no tongue before me had such emerald happiness, such divine delicacy. Even the
most profound melancholy of such a Dionysus is still turned into a dithyramb; I will take, as an
indication, the 'Night-Song', his immortal lament at being condemned not to love by the
superabundance of light and power, by his sunlike nature.
Nothing like this has ever been composed, ever been felt, ever been suffered: this is how a god
suffers, a Dionysus. The answer to such a dithyramb of solar solitude in the light would be Ariadne*.
. . Who knows apart from me what Ariadne is!. . . To all such riddles no one has yet had the solution;
I doubt anyone has ever even seen riddles here. — At one point Zarathustra strictly specifies his
task — it is mine, too — so that no one can be mistaken about its sense: he is yessaying to the
point of justifying, of redeeming even all that is past. I walk among human beings as among
fragments of the future: that future which I envisage.
I will emphasize one final point, prompted by the highlighted verse. For a Dionysian task the
hardness of the hammer, the pleasure even in destroying are crucial preconditions. The imperative
'Become hard!',* the deepest conviction that all creators are hard, is the true badge of a Dionysian
nature. —
The task for the years that now followed was marked out as strictly as possible. Now that the
yes-saying part of my task was solved, it was the turn of the no-saying, no-doing half: the
revaluation of previous values itself, the great war — the conjuring up of a day of decision. Included
here is the slow look around for related people, for those who from strength would lend me a hand in
destroying. — From then on all my writings are fish-hooks: perhaps I am as good as anyone at
fishing?. . . If nothing was caught, then I am not to blame. There weren 't any fish. . .
This book (1886) is in all essentials a critique of modernity, not excluding the modern sciences, the
modern arts, even modern politics, together with pointers towards an opposing type, as unmodern
as possible, a noble, yes-saying type. In the latter sense the book is a school for the gentilhomme*
this concept understood more spiritually and more radically than ever before. You must have
courage in your body to be able just to endure it, you mustn't have learnt to fear*. . . All the things
the age is proud of are felt as contradictions of this type, almost as bad manners, for example the
famous 'objectivity', the 'sympathy with all that suffers', the 'historical sense' with its toadying to
foreign taste, its grovelling to petits faits * the 'scientificity'. — If you consider that the book follows
after Zarathustra, then perhaps you will also guess the dietary regime without which it could not
have come into being. The eye, indulged by a tremendous compulsion to see into the distance —
Zarathustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar* — is forced here to focus on what is closest,
the present, what is around us. In all aspects, and especially in its form, you will find the same
capricious turning away from the instincts which made a Zarathustra possible. Refinement in form, in
intention, in the art of silence is in the foreground; psychology is handled with avowed harshness
and cruelty — the book is devoid of any good-natured word... All this aids recuperation: after all,
who could guess just what a recuperation is called for by such a squandering of goodness as is
Zarathustra?. . . Theologically speaking — and listen well, for I rarely speak as a theologian — it
was God himself who lay down in the form of a serpent under the Tree of Knowledge when his days'
work was done: that was his way of recuperating from being God. . . He had made everything too
beautiful. . . The Devil is just God being idle on that seventh day*. . .
The three essays that make up this genealogy are perhaps, as regards their expression, intention,
and art of surprise, the uncanniest thing yet written. Dionysus, as is well known, is also the god of
darkness. — Each time a beginning that is intended to lead astray, cool, scientific, even ironic,
intentionally foreground, intentionally off-putting. Gradually more agitation; patches of sheet
lightning; very unpleasant truths growing louder from afar with a muffled drone — till finally a tempo
feroce* is reached, when everything drives forward with immense excitement. At the end each time,
among absolutely terrible detonations, a new truth visible between thick clouds. — The truth of the
Jirst essay is the psychology of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of resentment,
not, as is commonly believed, out of the 'spirit' — essentially a counter-movement, the great revolt
against the dominance of noble values. The second essay gives the psychology of conscience: this
is not, as is commonly believed, 'the voice of God in man' — it is the instinct of cruelty turned back
on itself when it can no longer discharge itself outwards. Cruelty brought to light here for the first
time as one of the oldest and most entrenched of cultural foundations. The third essay gives the
answer to the question of where the immense power of the ascetic ideal, the priestly ideal, springs
from, even though it is the harmful ideal par excellence, a will to the end, a decadence ideal.
Answer: not because God is at work behind the priests, as is commonly believed, hut faute de mieux
— because it was the only ideal till now, because it had no competition. 'For man will rather will
nothingness than not will'*. . . Above all there was no counter-ideal — till Zarathustra. — I have
been understood. Three decisive preliminary works of a psychologist towards a revaluation of all
values. — This book contains the first psychology of the priest.
This work of not even 1 50 pages, cheerful and fateful in tone, a demon that laughs — the product
of so few days that I hesitate to say how many — is the absolute exception among books: there is
nothing richer in substance, more independent, more subversive — more wicked. Anyone who
wants to get a quick idea of how topsyturvy everything was before I came along should make a start
with this work. What the title-page calls idol is quite simply what till now has been called 'truth'.
Twilight of the Idols — in plain words: the old truth is coming to an end. . .
There is no reality, no 'ideality' that is not touched on in this work ( — 'touched on': what a cautious
euphemism!...) Not just the eternal idols, but also the most recent of all, hence the most doddery.
'Modern ideas', for example. A great wind blows through the trees, and all around fruits drop down
— truths. It has in it the profligacy of an all-too-rich autumn: you trip over truths, you even trample
some to death — there are too many of them. . . But what you lay your hands on is nothing still
doubtful, rather decisions. I am the first to have the yardstick for 'truths' in my hand, I am the first to
be able to decide. As if a second consciousness had grown within me, as if 'the will' had lit a light
within me to shine on the wrong path which it had been heading down so far. . . The wrong path —
people called it the way to 'truth'. . . All 'dark stress' is over with; it was precisely the good man who
had the least idea about the right way*. . . And in all seriousness, no one before me knew the right
way, the way upwards: only after me are there hopes, tasks, paths to prescribe to culture once
again — / am their evangelist. . . And that is why I am also a destiny.
Immediately after finishing the aforementioned work and without wasting so much as a day I set
about the immense task of the Revaluation* with a sovereign feeling of pride to which nothing else
comes close, every moment sure of my immortality and engraving sign after sign in tablets of bronze
with the certainty of a destiny. The preface was produced on 3 September 1888: that morning, after
I had written it down, I stepped outside and found before me the most beautiful day the Upper
Engadine has ever shown me — limpid, aglow with colour, containing within itself all opposites, all
gradations between ice and south. — Not until 20 September did I leave Sils-Maria, detained by
floods till in the end I was long since the only visitor in this wonderful place, on which my gratitude
wants to bestow the gift of an immortal name. After a journey beset by incident, even life-threatening
danger from the floods in Como, which I did not reach till deep into the night, I arrived on the
afternoon of the 21st in Turin, my proven place, my residence from now on. I took the same
apartment again as I had had in the spring, via Carlo Alberto 6, III, opposite the mighty Palazzo
Carignano, where Vittore Emanuele was born, looking out onto the Piazza Carlo Alberto and the
hills beyond. Without hesitating and without letting myself be distracted for a moment, I went to work
again: just the last quarter of the work was still to be polished off. On 30 September a great triumph;
completion of the Revaluation; a god at his leisure beside the Po. That same day, moreover, I wrote
the foreword to Twilight of the Idols, correcting the proofs of which had been my relaxation in
September. — I have never experienced such an autumn, never even thought such a thing
possible on earth — a Claude Lorrain imagined into infinity, every day of the same unbridled
perfection. —
To do this work justice you need to be suffering from the fate of music as if from an open wound. —
What do I suffer from when I suffer from the fate of music? The fact that music has been robbed of
its world-transfiguring, yes-saying character — that it is decadence music and no longer the flute of
Dionysus. . . But assuming that you feel for the cause of music in this way as if it were your own
cause, the history of your own suffering, then you will find this work full of considerations and
excessively mild. In such cases being cheerful and good-naturedly mocking oneself as well —
ridendo dicere severum* where verum dicere* would justify any amount of harshness — is
humaneness itself. Does anyone really doubt that, as an old artillerist, I am able to bring up my big
guns against Wagner? — I kept to myself everything decisive in this matter — I loved Wagner. —
Ultimately my task's purpose and path contains an attack on a more subtle 'unknown', not easily
guessed by anyone else — oh, I have still to expose 'unknowns' quite different from a Cagliostro of
music — still more, of course, an attack on the German nation, which in spiritual matters is
becoming ever more sluggish and poorer in instinct, ever more honest, and which with an enviable
appetite continues to nourish itself on opposites and gulps down 'faith' as well as scientificity,
'Christian charity' as well as anti-Semitism, the will to power (to the 'Reich') as well as the evangile
des humbles* without troubling its digestion... What impartiality between opposites! what gastric
neutrality and 'selflessness'! What a sense of fairness the German palate has, giving everything
equal rights — finding everything to its taste. . . Without a shadow of a doubt, the Germans are
idealists. . . The last time I visited Germany I found German taste striving to grant equal rights to
Wagner and the Trumpeter of Sackingen;* I myself witnessed at first hand the founding in Leipzig, in
honour of Master Heinrich Schiitz — one of the most genuine and German of musicians, German in
the old sense of the word, not just a Reich German — of a Liszt Association, with the aim of
preserving and promoting wily church music*. . . Without a shadow of a doubt, the Germans are
idealists. . .
They have compromised themselves over me thus far, and I doubt they will do any better in future.
— Ah, how I yearn to be a bad prophet in this respect!. . . At present my natural readers and
listeners are Russian, Scandinavian, and French — will they always be so? — The Germans are
inscribed in the history of knowledge with nothing but ambiguous names; they have only ever
produced 'unconscious' counterfeiters ( — Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Schleiermacher
deserve to be called this just as much as Kant and Leibniz; they are all just veil-makers* — ): they
shall never have the honour of seeing the first honest spirit in the history of spirit, the spirit in which
the truth comes to pass judgement on four millennia of counterfeiting, conflated with the German
spirit. The 'German spirit' is my bad air: I have difficulty breathing when near the uncleanliness in
psychologicis* become instinct which a German's every word, every expression betrays. They never
went through a seventeenth century of harsh self-examination like the French; a La Rochefoucauld,
a Descartes are a hundred times superior to the foremost Germans in honesty — to this day they
have never had a psychologist. But psychology is practically the yardstick of a race's cleanliness or
uncleanliness. . . And if you are not even cleanly, how can you be profound} A German is almost like
a woman in that you can never get to the bottom of him: he doesn't have one, that is all. But that
doesn't even make you shallow.* — What they call 'profound' in Germany is precisely this
instinctual uncleanliness towards oneself which I am now talking about: people don't want to be
clear about themselves. Should I not suggest the word 'German' as an international coinage for this
psychological depravity? — At the moment, for example, the German Kaiser is calling it his
'Christian duty' to free the slaves in Africa: we other Europeans, then, would call that just 'German'...
Have the Germans produced even one single book that was profound? They lack even the concept
of what is profound in a book. I have known scholars who considered Kant profound; at the Prussian
court, I fear, they consider Herr von Treitschke profound. And when I occasionally praise Stendhal
as a profound psychologist, I have come across university professors who had me spell the name. .
.
I know my lot. Some day my name will be linked to the memory of something monstrous, of a crisis
as yet unprecedented on earth, the most profound collision of consciences, a decision conjured up
against everything hitherto believed, demanded, hallowed. I am not a man, I am dynamite.* — And
for all that, there is nothing in me of a founder of religions — religions are for the rabble; I need to
wash my hands after contact with religious people... I don't want any 'disciples'; I think I am too
malicious to believe in myself; I never address crowds. . . I have a terrible fear of being declared
holy one day: you can guess why I am publishing this book beforehand — it should prevent any
mischief-making with me. . . I don't want to be a saint, and would rather be a buffoon. . . Perhaps I
am a buffoon. . . And nevertheless — or rather not nevertheless, for till now there has never been
anyone more hypocritical than saints — the truth speaks from me. — But my truth is terrifying, for
lies were called truth so far. — Revaluation of all values: that is my formula for the highest act of
self-reflection on the part of humanity, which has become flesh* and genius in me. My lot wills it that
I must be the first decent human being, that I know I stand in opposition to the hypocrisy of
millennia. . . I was the first to discover the truth, by being the first to sense — smell — the lie as a
lie... My genius is in my nostrils. . . I contradict as no one has ever contradicted before and yet am
the opposite of a no-saying spirit. I am an evangelist the like of which there has never been; I know
tasks so lofty that there has not yet been a concept for them; I am the first to give rise to new hopes.
Bearing all this in mind, I am necessarily also the man of impending disaster. For when the truth
squares up to the lie of millennia, we will have upheavals, a spasm of earth- quakes, a removal of
mountain and valley* such as have never been dreamed of. The notion of politics will then
completely dissolve into a spiritual war, and all configurations of power from the old society will be
exploded — they are all based on a lie: there will be wars such as there have never yet been on
earth. Only since I came on the scene has there been great politics on earth. —
I am by far the most terrifying human being there has ever been; this does not prevent me from
being the most benevolent in future. I know the pleasure in destroying to an extent commensurate
with my power to destroy — in both I obey my Dionysian nature, which is incapable of separating
no-doing from yes-saying. I am the first immoralist: hence I am the destroyer par excellence. —
I have not been asked — I ought to have been asked — what precisely in my mouth, in the mouth
of the first immoralist, the name Zarathustra means: for what makes that Persian incredibly unique in
history is precisely the opposite of it. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle of good and evil
the true driving-wheel in the machinery of things — the translation of morality into the metaphysical,
as strength, cause, goal in itself, is his doing. But in principle this question would already be the
answer. Zarathustra created the disastrous error that is morality: thus he must also be the first to
acknowledge the mistake. It is not just that he has had longer and more experience of this than any
other thinker — after all, the whole of history is the experimental refutation of the principle of the
so-called 'moral world order' — more importantly, Zarathustra is more truthful than any other
thinker. His teaching and it alone has as its highest virtue truthfulness — in other words the
opposite of the cowardice of the 'idealist', who takes flight from reality; Zarathustra has more bravery
in his body than all the other thinkers put together. Tell the truth and shoot arrows well, that is
Persian virtue.* — Am I understood?. . . The self-overcoming of morality out of truthfulness, the
self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite — me — this is what the name of Zarathustra
means in my mouth.
At root my term Smmoralisf incorporates two denials. On the one hand I am denying a type of
human being who has hitherto been considered the highest type — the good, the benevolent, the
beneficent; on the other hand I am denying a kind of morality that has achieved validity and
predominance as morality in itself — decadence morality, or to put it more concretely, Christian
morality. The second contradiction could be seen as the more decisive, since, broadly speaking, the
overestimation of goodness and benevolence strikes me as already a consequence of decadence,
as a symptom of weakness, as irreconcilable with an ascendant and yes-saying life: denying and
destroying are the preconditions for yes-saying. — Let me stay for a moment with the psychology
of the good man. In order to judge what a type of human being is worth, you have to calculate how
much it costs to maintain it — you have to know its conditions of existence. The condition of
existence of the good is lying — put differently, not wanting at any price to see how reality is
constituted, which is not in a manner so as to challenge benevolent instincts at every turn, still less
so as to permit the intrusion of short-sighted, good-natured hands at every turn. Considering
emergencies of every kind as an objection, as something to be abolished, is niaiserie* par
excellence, broadly speaking, a real disaster in its consequences, a destiny of stupidity —
practically as stupid as the will to abolish bad weather — out of sympathy with the poor, perhaps...
In the great economy of the whole the awfulness of reality (in the affects, in the desires, in the will to
power) is incalculably more necessary than is that form of petty happiness, so-called 'goodness';
indeed you have to be indulgent to even give it house-room, such is its instinctual hypocrisy. I shall
have a great opportunity to demonstrate for the whole of history the exceptionally uncanny
consequences of optimism, this monstrous product of the homines optimi* Zarathustra, the first to
understand that the optimist is just as much a decadent as the pessimist and possibly more noxious,
says: good men never tell the truth. False coasts and securities the good have taught you; in the lies
of the good you were born and bred. Everything has been lied about and twisted around down to its
ground by the good* Fortunately the world is not constructed for the benefit of instincts, so that
merely good-natured herd animals find their circumscribed happiness in it; demanding that
everything should become 'good man', herd animal, blue-eyed, benevolent, 'beautiful soul' — or, as
Mr Herbert Spencer would have it, altruistic — would mean depriving existence of its great
character, castrating humanity and reducing it to a wretched chinoiserie. — And this has been
attempted!. . . This is precisely what people have called morality. . . It is in this sense that
Zarathustra calls the good at times 'the last men', at times the 'beginning of the end'; above all he
senses they are the most harmful kind of human being, because they ply their existence both at the
expense of the truth and at the expense of the future.
Zarathustra, the first psychologist of the good, is — consequently — a friend of the evil. When a
decadence kind of man rises to the rank of the highest kind, this could only happen at the expense
of the opposite kind, the strong man assured in life. When the herd animal beams in the gleam of
the purest virtue, the exceptional man must have been devalued to become evil. When hypocrisy at
any price lays claim to the perspective of 'truth', the really truthful man must go by the worst of
names. Zarathustra leaves no room for doubt here: he says that it was precisely knowing the good
people, the 'best' people, that made him shudder before humanity as a whole; it was this revulsion
that gave him the wings 'on which to soar into distant futures'* — he makes no secret of the fact
that his type of man, a relatively superhuman type, is superhuman precisely in relation to the good,
that the good and the just would call his overman a devil. . .
It is here and nowhere else that one must make a start in order to understand what Zarathustra
wants: the kind of man that he conceives, conceives reality as it is: it is strong enough for that — it
is not alienated from it, not at one remove from it, it is reality itself, it has all its terrible and
questionable aspects, too; that is the only way man can have greatness. . .
— But there is another reason, too, why I have chosen the word Hmmoralisf as my emblem, my
badge of honour: I am proud to have this word that sets me apart from the whole of humanity. No
one has yet felt Christian morality to be beneath them: for that you need an elevation, a
far-sightedness, a hitherto quite unprecedented psychological depth and bottomlessness. Christian
morality has hitherto been the Circe of all thinkers — they were in its service. — Who before me
has climbed into the caves from which the poisonous fug of this kind of ideal — world-denial! —
emanates? Who has dared even to suppose that they are caves? Who was there among
philosophers before me who was a psychologist and not rather the opposite, a 'higher swindler', an
'idealist'? There just was no psychology before me. — Being the first here can be a curse, at any
rate it is a destiny: for you are also the first to despise. . . Disgust at man is my danger*...
— Have I been understood? — I have not said a word just now that I might not have said five
years ago through the mouth of Zarathustra. The discovery of Christian morality is an event without
parallel, a real catastrophe. Anyone who raises awareness about it is a force majeure, a destiny —
he breaks the history of humanity in two. You live before him or you live after him. . . The
lightning-bolt of truth has struck precisely what stood highest hitherto: anyone who understands
what has been destroyed there should look to see if he has anything left in his hands. Everything
called 'truth' so far has been recognized as the most harmful, malicious, subterranean form of lie;
the holy pretext of 'improving' humanity recognized as a ruse to drain dry life itself and make it
anaemic. Morality as vampirism* . . . Anyone who discovers morality discovers at the same time the
valuelessness of all the values that are or have been believed in; in the most revered types of man,
even those pronounced holy, he no longer sees anything venerable, but sees in them the most
disastrous kind of deformity, disastrous because fascinating. . . The concept 'God' invented as a
counter-concept to life — bringing together into one dreadful unity everything harmful, poisonous,
slanderous, the whole mortal enmity against life! The concept 'hereafter', 'true world' invented in
order to devalue the only world there is — so as to leave no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly
reality! The concepts 'soul', 'spirit', ultimately even 'immortal soul' invented so as to despise the
body, to make it sick — 'holy' — so as to approach with terrible negligence all the things in life that
deserve to be taken seriously, questions of food, accommodation, spiritual diet, the treatment of the
sick, cleanliness, weather! Instead of health the 'salvation of the soul' — in other words zfolie
circulaire* between penitential cramps and redemption hysteria! The concept 'sin' invented along
with its accompanying torture instrument, the concept 'free will', so as to confuse the instincts and
make mistrust of the instincts into second nature! In the concept of the 'selfless', the 'self-denying',
the true emblem of decadence that turns being enticed by what is harmful, no longer being able to
find what is in one's interest, self-destruction, into the badge of value itself, into 'duty', 'holiness',
'divinity' in man! Ultimately — and this is the most terrible thing — in the concept of the good man
siding with everything weak, sick, misshapen, suffering from itself, everything that ought to perish
— the law of selection crossed, an ideal made out of the contradiction to the proud man who turned
out well, to the yes-saying, future-assured, futureconfirming man — who is called evil from now on.
. . And all this was believed in as morality] — Ecrasez I'infdme!*
I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew
Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by "instinct." Not only is his
overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect — but in five
main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to
me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world-order,
the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due
more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very
high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a
twosomeness. Strange! Incidentally, I am not at all as well as I had hoped. Exceptional weather here
too! Eternal change of atmospheric conditions! — that will yet drive me out of Europe! I must have
clear skies for months, else I get nowhere. Already six severe attacks of two or three days each.
With affectionate love, Your friend.
In Germany there is much complaining about my "eccentricities." But since it is not known where my
center is, it won't be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been "eccentric." That I was a
philologist, for example, meant that I was outside my center (which fortunately does not mean that I
was a poor philologist). Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. It was a
highly dangerous experiment; now that I know it did not ruin me, I also know what significance it had
for me — it was the most severe test of my character.
I've seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr. FГѓВ¶rster has not yet severed his connection with the
anti-Semitic movement. ... Since then I've had difficulty coming up with any of the tenderness and
protectiveness I've so long felt toward you. The separation between us is thereby decided in really
the most absurd way. Have you grasped nothing of the reason why I am in the world? ... Now it has
gone so far that I have to defend myself hand and foot against people who confuse me with these
anti-Semitic canaille; after my own sister, my former sister, and after Widemann more recently have
given the impetus to this most dire of all confusions. After I read the name Zarathustra in the
anti-Semitic Correspondence my forbearance came to an end. I am now in a position of emergency
defense against your spouse's Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities shall not sully my
ideal!!
You have committed one of the greatest stupidities — for yourself and for me! Your association
with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and
again with ire or melancholy. ... It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and
unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have
recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this
party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the
relation to FГѓВ¶rster, as well as the aftereffects of my former publisher, the anti-Semitic Schmeitzner,
always brings the adherents of this disagreeable party back to the idea that I must belong to them
after all. ... It arouses mistrust against my character, as if publicly I condemned something which I
have favored secretly — and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of
Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several
times.
The modern scientific counterpart to belief in God is the belief in the universe as an organism: this
disgusts me. This is to make what is quite rare and extremely derivative, the organic, which we
perceive only on the surface of the earth, into something essential, universal, and eternal! This is still
an anthropomorphizing of nature!
Nochmals gesagt, heute ist es mir ein unmГѓВ¶gliches Buch, - ich heisse es schlecht geschrieben,
schwerfГѓВ¤llig, peinlich, bilderwГѓВјthig und bilderwirrig, gefГѓВјhlsam, hier und da verzuckert bis zum
Femininischen, ungleich im Tempo, ohne Willen zur logischen Sauberkeit, sehr ГѓВјberzeugt und
deshalb des Beweisens sich ГѓВјberhebend, misstrauisch selbst gegen die Schicklichkeit des
Beweisens, als Buch fГѓВјr Eingeweihte, als "Musik" fГѓВјr Solche, die auf Musik getauft, die auf
gemeinsame und seltene Kunst-Erfahrungen hin von Anfang der Dinge an verbunden sind, als
Erkennungszeichen fГѓВјr Blutsverwandte in artibus, - ein hochmГѓВјthiges und schwГѓВ¤rmerisches
Buch, das sich gegen das profanum vulgus der "Gebildeten" von vornherein noch mehr als gegen
das "Volk" abschliesst, welches aber, wie seine Wirkung bewies und beweist, sich gut genug auch
darauf verstehen muss, sich seine MitschwГѓВ¤rmer zu suchen und sie auf neue Schleichwege und
TanzplГѓВ¤tze zu locken.
To say it once again: today I find it an impossible book — badly written, clumsy and embarrassing,
its images frenzied and confused, sentimental, in some places saccharine-sweet to the point of
effeminacy, uneven in pace, lacking in any desire for logical purity, so sure of its convictions that it is
above any need for proof, and even suspicious of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates, 'music'
for those who have been baptized in the name of music and who are related from the first by their
common and rare experiences of art, a shibboleth for first cousins in artibus [in the arts] an arrogant
and fanatical book that wished from the start to exclude the profanum vulgus [the profane mass] of
the 'educated' even more than the 'people'; but a book which, as its impact has shown and
continues to show, has a strange knack of seeking out its fellow-revellers and enticing them on to
new secret paths and dancing-places.
Wie nun der Philosoph zur Wirklichkeit des Daseins, so verhГѓВ¤lt sich der kГѓВјnstlerisch erregbare
Mensch zur Wirklichkeit des Traumes; er sieht genau und gern zu: denn aus diesen Bildern deutet
er sich das Leben, an diesen VorgГѓВ¤ngen ГѓВјbt er sich fГѓВјr das Leben. Nicht etwa nur die
angenehmen und freundlichen Bilder sind es, die er mit jener AllverstГѓВ¤ndigkeit an sich erfГѓВ¤hrt:
auch das Ernste, TrГѓВјbe, Traurige, Finstere, die plГѓВ¶tzlichen Hemmungen, die Neckereien des
Zufalls, die bГѓВ¤nglichen Erwartungen, kurz die ganze "gГѓВ¶ttliche KomГѓВ¶die" des Lebens, mit dem
Inferno, zieht an ihm vorbei, nicht nur wie ein Schattenspiel - denn er lebt und leidet mit in diesen
Scenen - und doch auch nicht ohne jene flГѓВјchtige Empfindung des Scheins; und vielleicht erinnert
sich Mancher, gleich mir, in den GefГѓВ¤hrlichkeiten und Schrecken des Traumes sich mitunter
ermuthigend und mit Erfolg zugerufen zu haben: "Es ist ein Traum! Ich will ihn weiter trГѓВ¤umen!"
Wie man mir auch von Personen erzГѓВ¤hlt hat, die die CausalitГѓВ¤t eines und desselben Traumes
ГѓВјber drei und mehr aufeinanderfolgende NГѓВ¤chte hin fortzusetzen im Stande waren: Thatsachen,
welche deutlich Zeugniss dafГѓВјr abgeben, dass unser innerstes Wesen, der gemeinsame
Untergrund von uns allen, mit tiefer Lust und freudiger Nothwendigkeit den Traum an sich erfГѓВ¤hrt.
Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the
philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is
out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life. It is
not only pleasant and agreeable images that he experiences with such universal understanding: the
serious, the gloomy, the sad and the profound, the sudden restraints, the mockeries of chance,
fearful expectations, in short the whole 'divine comedy' of life, the Inferno included, passes before
him, not only as a shadow-play — for he too lives and suffers through these scenes — and yet
also not without that fleeting sense of illusion; and perhaps many, like myself, can remember calling
out to themselves in encouragement, amid the perils and terrors of the dream, and with success: 'It
is a dream! I want to dream on!' Just as I have often been told of people who have been able to
continue one and the same dream over three and more successive nights: facts which clearly show
that our innermost being, our common foundation, experiences dreams with profound pleasure and
joyful necessity.
...in diesen Sanct-Johann- und Sanct-VeittГѓВ¤nzern erkennen wir die bacchischen ChГѓВ¶re der
Griechen wieder, mit ihrer Vorgeschichte in Kleinasien, bis hin zu Babylon und den orgiastischen
SakГѓВ¤en. Es giebt Menschen, die, aus Mangel an Erfahrung oder aus Stumpfsinn, sich von solchen
Erscheinungen wie von "Volkskrankheiten", spГѓВ¶ttisch oder bedauernd im GefГѓВјhl der eigenen
Gesundheit abwenden: die Armen ahnen freilich nicht, wie leichenfarbig und gespenstisch eben
diese ihre "Gesundheit" sich ausnimmt, wenn an ihnen das glГѓВјhende Leben dionysischer
SchwГѓВ¤rmer vorГѓВјberbraust.
In these dancers of Saint John and Saint Vitus we can recognize the Bacchic choruses of the
Greeks, with their prehistory in Asia Minor, as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea. Some
people, either through a lack of experience or through obtuseness, turn away with pity or contempt
from phenomena such as these as from 'folk diseases', bolstered by a sense of their own sanity;
these poor creatures have no idea how blighted and ghostly this 'sanity' of theirs sounds when the
glowing life of Dionysiac revellers thunders past them.
Es geht die alte Sage, dass KГѓВ¶nig Midas lange Zeit nach dem weisen Silen, dem Begleiter des
Dionysus, im Walde gejagt habe, ohne ihn zu fangen. Als er ihm endlich in die HГѓВ¤nde gefallen ist,
fragt der KГѓВ¶nig, was fГѓВјr den Menschen das Allerbeste und AllervorzГѓВјglichste sei. Starr und
unbeweglich schweigt der DГѓВ¤mon; bis er, durch den KГѓВ¶nig gezwungen, endlich unter gellem
Lachen in diese Worte ausbricht: `Elendes Eintagsgeschlecht, des Zufalls Kinder und der MГѓВјhsal,
was zwingst du mich dir zu sagen, was nicht zu hГѓВ¶ren fГѓВјr dich das Erspriesslichste ist? Das
Allerbeste ist fГѓВјr dich gГѓВ¤nzlich unerreichbar: nicht geboren zu sein, nicht zu sein, nichts zu sein.
Das Zweitbeste aber ist fГѓВјr dich - bald zu sterben`."
According to the old story, King Midas had long hunted wise Silenus, Dionysus' companion, without
catching him. When Silenus had finally fallen into his clutches, the king asked him what was the best
and most desirable thing of all for mankind. The daemon stood still, stiff and motionless, until at last,
forced by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and spoke these words: 'Miserable, ephemeral race,
children of hazard and hardship, why do you force me to say what it would be much more fruitful for
you not to hear? The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not
to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you — is to die soon.'
Mit dem Tode der griechischen TragГѓВ¶die dagegen entstand eine ungeheure, ГѓВјberall tief
empfundene Leere; wie einmal griechische Schiffer zu Zeiten des Tiberius an einem einsamen
Eiland den erschГѓВјtternden Schrei hГѓВ¶rten "der grosse Pan ist todt": so klang es jetzt wie ein
schmerzlicher Klageton durch die hellenische Welt: "die TragГѓВ¶die ist todt! Die Poesie selbst ist mit
ihr verloren gegangen! Fort, fort mit euch verkГѓВјmmerten, abgemagerten Epigonen! Fort in den
Hades, damit ihr euch dort an den Brosamen der vormaligen Meister einmal satt essen kГѓВ¶nnt!"
Greek tragedy met her death in a different way from all the older sister arts: she died tragically by
her own hand, after irresolvable conflicts, while the others died happy and peaceful at an advanced
age. If a painless death, leaving behind beautiful progeny, is the sign of a happy natural state, then
the endings of the other arts show us the example of just such a happy natural state: they sink
slowly, and with their dying eyes they behold their fairer offspring, who lift up their heads in bold
impatience. The death of Greek tragedy, on the other hand, left a great void whose effects were felt
profoundly, far and wide; as once Greek sailors in Tiberius' time heard the distressing cry 'the god
Pan is dead' issuing from a lonely island, now, throughout the Hellenic world, this cry resounded like
an agonized lament: 'Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself died with it! Away, away with you, puny, stunted
imitators! Away with you to Hades, and eat your fill of the old masters' crumbs!'
Bei diesem Zusammenhange ist die leidenschaftliche Zuneigung begreiflich, welche die Dichter der
neueren KomГѓВ¶die zu Euripides empfanden; so dass der Wunsch des Philemon nicht weiter
befremdet, der sich sogleich aufhГѓВ¤ngen lassen mochte, nur um den Euripides in der Unterwelt
aufsuchen zu kГѓВ¶nnen: wenn er nur ГѓВјberhaupt ГѓВјberzeugt sein dГѓВјrfte, dass der Verstorbene
auch jetzt noch bei Verstande sei.
This context enables us to understand the passionate affection in which the poets of the New
Comedy held Euripides; so that we are no longer startled by the desire of Philemon, who wished to
be hanged at once so that he might meet Euripides in the underworld, so long as he could be sure
that the deceased was still in full possession of his senses.
Nun aber schien Sokrates die tragische Kunst nicht einmal "die Wahrheit zu sagen": abgesehen
davon, dass sie sich an den wendet, der "nicht viel Verstand besitzt", also nicht an den Philosophen:
ein zweifacher Grund, von ihr fern zu bleiben. Wie Plato, rechnete er sie zu den schmeichlerischen
KГѓВјnsten, die nur das Angenehme, nicht das NГѓВјtzliche darstellen und verlangte deshalb bei
seinen JГѓВјngern Enthaltsamkeit und strenge Absonderung von solchen unphilosophischen
Reizungen; mit solchem Erfolge, dass der jugendliche TragГѓВ¶diendichter Plato zu allererst seine
Dichtungen verbrannte, um SchГѓВјler des Sokrates werden zu kГѓВ¶nnen.
But for Socrates, tragedy did not even seem to "tell what's true", quite apart from the fact that it
addresses "those without much wit", not the philosopher: another reason for giving it a wide berth.
Like Plato, he numbered it among the flattering arts which represent only the agreeable, not the
useful, and therefore required that his disciples abstain most rigidly from such unphilosophical
stimuli — with such success that the young tragedian, Plato, burnt his writings in order to become a
pupil of Socrates.
...der kann sich nicht entbrechen, in Sokrates den einen Wendepunkt und Wirbel der sogenannten
Weltgeschichte zu sehen. Denn dГѓВ¤chte man sich einmal diese ganze unbezifferbare Summe von
Kraft, die fГѓВјr jene Welttendenz verbraucht worden ist, nicht im Dienste des Erkennens, sondern
auf die praktischen d.h. egoistischen Ziele der Individuen und VГѓВ¶lker verwendet, so wГѓВ¤re
wahrscheinlich in allgemeinen VernichtungskГѓВ¤mpfen und fortdauernden VГѓВ¶lkerwanderungen die
instinctive Lust zum Leben so abgeschwГѓВ¤cht, dass, bei der Gewohnheit des Selbstmordes, der
Einzelne vielleicht den letzten Rest von PflichtgefГѓВјhl empfinden mГѓВјsste, wenn er, wie der
Bewohner der Fidschiinseln, als Sohn seine Eltern, als Freund seinen Freund erdrosselt: ein
praktischer Pessimismus, der selbst eine grausenhafte Ethik des VГѓВ¶lkermordes aus Mitleid
erzeugen kГѓВ¶nnte - der ГѓВјbrigens ГѓВјberall in der Welt vorhanden ist und vorhanden war, wo nicht
die Kunst in irgend welchen Formen, besonders als Religion und Wissenschaft, zum Heilmittel und
zur Abwehr jenes Pesthauchs erschienen ist.
We cannot help but see Socrates as the turning-point, the vortex of world history. For if we imagine
that the whole incalculable store of energy used in that global tendency had been used not in the
service of knowledge but in ways applied to the practical — selfish — goals of individuals and
nations, universal wars of destruction and constant migrations of peoples would have enfeebled
man's instinctive zest for life to the point where, suicide having become universal, the individual
would perhaps feel a vestigial duty as a son to strangle his parents, or as a friend his friend, as the
Fiji islanders do: a practical pessimism that could even produce a terrible ethic of genocide through
pity, and which is, and always has been, present everywhere in the world where art has not in some
form, particularly as religion and science, appeared as a remedy and means of prevention for this
breath of pestilence.
Aber wie verГѓВ¤ndert sich plГѓВ¶tzlich jene eben so dГѓВјster geschilderte Wildniss unserer
ermГѓВјdeten Cultur, wenn sie der dionysische Zauber berГѓВјhrt! Ein Sturmwind packt alles
Abgelebte, Morsche, Zerbrochne, VerkГѓВјmmerte, hГѓВјllt es wirbelnd in eine rothe Staubwolke und
trГѓВ¤gt es wie ein Geier in die LГѓВјfte. Verwirrt suchen unsere Blicke nach dem Entschwundenen:
denn was sie sehen, ist wie aus einer Versenkung an's goldne Licht gestiegen, so voll und grГѓВјn,
so ГѓВјppig lebendig, so sehnsuchtsvoll unermesslich. Die TragГѓВ¶die sitzt inmitten dieses
Ueberflusses an Leben, Leid und Lust, in erhabener EntzГѓВјckung, sie horcht einem fernen
schwermГѓВјthigen Gesange - er erzГѓВ¤hlt von den MГѓВјttern des Seins, deren Namen lauten:
Wahn, Wille, Wehe. - Ja, meine Freunde, glaubt mit mir an das dionysische Leben und an die
Wiedergeburt der TragГѓВ¶die. Die Zeit des sokratischen Menschen ist vorГѓВјber: krГѓВ¤nzt euch mit
Epheu, nehmt den Thyrsusstab zur Hand und wundert euch nicht, wenn Tiger und Panther sich
schmeichelnd zu euren Knien niederlegen. Jetzt wagt es nur, tragische Menschen zu sein: denn ihr
sollt erlГѓВ¶st werden. Ihr sollt den dionysischen Festzug von Indien nach Griechenland geleiten!
RГѓВјstet euch zu hartem Streite, aber glaubt an die Wunder eures Gottes!
But what changes come upon the weary desert of our culture, so darkly described, when it is
touched by the magic of Dionysus! A storm seizes everything decrepit, rotten, broken, stunted;
shrouds it in a whirling red cloud of dust and carries it into the air like a vulture. In vain confusion we
seek for all that has vanished; for what we see has risen as if from beneath he earth into the gold
light, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, immeasurable and filled with yearning. Tragedy sits in
sublime rapture amidst this abundance of life, suffering and delight, listening to a far-off, melancholy
song which tells of the Mothers of Being, whose names are Delusion, Will, Woe
Yes, my friends, join me in my faith in this Dionysiac life and the rebirth of tragedy. The age of
Socratic man is past: crown yourselves with ivy, grasp the thyrsus and do not be amazed if tigers
and panthers lie down fawning at your feet. Now dare to be tragic men, for you will be redeemed.
You shall join the Dionysiac procession from India to Greece! Gird yourselves for a hard battle, but
have faith in the miracles of your god!
Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into
numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.
That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only
a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever
beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately
illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect
looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with
the human intellect, nothing will have happened.
Variant translation: In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable
solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the
highest and most mendacious minute of "world history" — yet only a minute. After nature had
drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of
men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the
most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such
pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful
character.
Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in
borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for
oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the
rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an
honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in
illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."
What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself
completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him
— even concerning his own body — in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive
consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the
intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.
The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is
unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his
condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even
reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to
trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being
defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is
basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of
deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the
pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has
no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even
hostilely inclined.
It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess
a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that
is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.
The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never
a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The "thing in
itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is
likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least
worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing
these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors.' To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred
into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each
time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and
different one.
Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a
reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but
rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less
similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether
unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf
is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily
discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.
What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a
sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and
embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.
Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become
worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are
now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the
duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors.
Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd
and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand
for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which
are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at
his sense of truth.
The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself
from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a "rational" being, he
now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried
away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.
Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize
perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is
possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first
impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of
a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries — a new world, one
which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better
known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and
imperative world.
One may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an
infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running
water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one
constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not
to be blown apart by every wind.
When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it
there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand
regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a
mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth
to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic
truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid
apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis
of the world into man.
Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and
consistency: only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally
streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith
that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an
artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency. If but for an
instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his "self consciousness" would be
immediately destroyed. It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird
perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of
these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to
have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which
means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available.
Between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no
correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation: I mean, a suggestive
transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue — for which I there is
required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force. "Appearance" is a
word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. For it is not true
that the essence of things "appears" in the empirical world. A painter without hands who wished to
express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still
reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world. Even the relationship of a
nerve stimulus to the generated image is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been
generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on
the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it
would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus
to the generated image were a strictly causal one. In the same manner, an eternally repeated dream
would certainly be felt and judged to be reality. But the hardening and congealing of a metaphor
guarantees absolutely nothing concerning its necessity and exclusive justification.
If each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a
bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a
third even heard the same stimulus as a sound — then no one would speak of such a regularity of
nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree.
After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with
its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature — which, in turn, are known to us only
as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly
incomprehensible to us in their essence.
We produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the
spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be
amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear
within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things.
All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical
processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who
impress ourselves in this way
We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor
taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them
with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of
perceptions.
Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept
away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he
will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist.
And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers
which oppose scientific "truth" with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields
the most varied sorts of emblems.
The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for
a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This
drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is
constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and
another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally. This drive continually
confuses the conceptual categories and cells by bringing forward new transferences, metaphors,
and metonymies. It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents
itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence,
charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and
regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely
because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is
torn by art.
Man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with
happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the
theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that
master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its
Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring.
That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life
long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of
the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and
puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it
is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided
by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into
the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions;
when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in
unheard — of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old
conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present
intuition.
There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of
intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.
They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means
of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed
hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.
The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off
misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he
aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a
culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and
redemption — in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more
intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to
learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch.
In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people
must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For,
otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue
seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search.
[Philistines] only devised the notion of an epigone-age in order to secure peace for themselves, and
to be able to reject all the efforts of disturbing innovators summarily as the work of epigones. With
the view of ensuring their own tranquility, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to
transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into branches of history. ... No,
in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these
philosophical admirers of “nil admirari.― While professing to hate every form of fanaticism and
intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real
claims of culture.
In this way, a philosophy which veiled the Philistine confessions of its founder beneath neat twists
and flourishes of language proceeded further to discover a formula for the canonization of the
commonplace. It expatiated upon the rationalism of all reality, and thus ingratiated itself with the
Culture-Philistine, who also loves neat twists and flourishes, and who, above all, considers himself
real, and regards his reality as the standard of reason for the world. From this time forward he began
to allow every one, and even himself, to reflect, to investigate, to aestheticise, and, more particularly,
to make poetry, music, and even pictures—not to mention systems of philosophy; provided, of
course, that ... no assault were made upon the “reasonable― and the “real―—that is to
say, upon the Philistine.
In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that
no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an
assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his
neighbor, who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the
individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in
himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia. ...
Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which
unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish
promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone’s secret
bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle.
If it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time, then it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees
its salvation in public opinion, this is to say private laziness, is a time that really will be killed: I mean
that it will be struck out of the history of the true liberation of life. How reluctant later generations will
be to have anything to do with the relics of an era ruled, not by living men, but by pseudo-men
dominated by public opinion.
I will make an attempt to attain freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered in
this by the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one another, or that two continents are
separated by an ocean, or that all around it a religion is taught with did not yet exist a couple of
thousand years ago. All that is not you, it says to itself. No one can construct for you the bridge upon
which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
I always believed that at some time fate would take from me the terrible effort and duty of educating
myself. I believed that, when the time came, I would discover a philosopher to educate me, a true
philosopher whom one could follow without any misgiving because one would have more faith in him
than one had in oneself. Then I asked myself: what would be the principles by which he would
educate you?—and I reflected on what he might say about the two educational maxims which are
being hatched in our time. One of them demands that the educator should quickly recognize the real
strength of his pupil and then direct all his efforts and energy and heat at them so as to help that one
virtue to attain true maturity and fruitfulness. The other maxim, on the contrary, requires that the
educator should draw forth and nourish all the forces which exist in his pupil and bring them to a
harmonious relationship with one another. ... But where do we discover a harmonious whole at all, a
simultaneous sounding of many voice in one nature, if not in such men as Cellini, men in whom
everything, knowledge, desire, love, hate, strives towards a central point, a root force, and where a
harmonious system is constructed through the compelling domination of this living centre? And so
perhaps these two maxims are not opposites at all? Perhaps the one simply says that man should
have a center and the other than he should also have a periphery? That educating philosopher of
whom I dreamed would, I came to think, not only discover the central force, he would also know how
to prevent its acting destructively on the other forces: his educational task would, it seemed to me,
be to mould the whole man into a living solar and planetary system and to understand its higher
laws of motion.
Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel
to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and
revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most
disgusting invention of mankind.
It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if he forgets how to make war.
And yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born
of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and
cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort of the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference
to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking that a
people needs when it is losing its vitality.
Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds
love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it
appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to
reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.
Everyone superior in one thing. In civilized circumstances, everyone feels superior to everyone else
in at least one way; this is the basis of the general goodwill, inasmuch as everyone is someone who,
under certain conditions, can be of help, and need therefore feel no shame in allowing himself to be
helped.
Lebensalter und Wahrheit. - junge Leute lieben das Interessante und Absonderliche, gleichgГѓВјltig
wie wahr oder falsch es ist. Reifere Geister lieben Das an der Wahrheit, was an ihr interessant und
absonderlich ist. Ausgereifte KГѓВ¶pfe endlich lieben die Wahrheit auch in Dem, wo sie schlicht und
einfГѓВ¤ltig erscheint und dem gewГѓВ¶hnlichen Menschen Langeweile macht, weil sie gemerkt haben,
dass die Wahrheit das HГѓВ¶chste an Geist, was sie besitzt, mit der Miene der Einfalt zu sagen pflegt.
Der Gegenwart entfremdet. - Es hat grosse Vortheile, seiner Zeit sich einmal in stГѓВ¤rkerem Maasse
zu entfremden und gleichsam von ihrem Ufer zurГѓВјck in den Ocean der vergangenen
Weltbetrachtungen getrieben zu werden. Von dort aus nach der KГѓВјste zu blickend, ГѓВјberschaut
man wohl zum ersten Male ihre gesammte Gestaltung und hat, wenn man sich ihr wieder nГѓВ¤hert,
den Vortheil, sie besser im Ganzen zu verstehen, als Die, welche sie nie verlassen haben.
Alienated from the present. There are great advantages in for once removing ourselves distinctly
from our time and letting ourselves be driven from its shore back into the ocean of former world
views. Looking at the coast from that perspective, we survey for the first time its entire shape, and
when we near it again, we have the advantage of understanding it better on the whole than do those
who have never left it.
Philosophisch gesinnt sein. - GewГѓВ¶hnlich strebt man darnach, fГѓВјr alle Lebenslagen und
Ereignisse eine Haltung des GemГѓВјthes, eine Gattung von Ansichten zu erwerben, - das nennt
man vornehmlich philosophisch gesinnt sein. Aber fГѓВјr die Bereicherung der Erkenntniss mag es
hГѓВ¶heren Werth haben, nicht in dieser Weise sich zu uniformiren, sondern auf die leise Stimme der
verschiedenen Lebenslagen zu hГѓВ¶ren; diese bringen ihre eigenen Ansichten mit sich. So nimmt
man erkennenden Antheil am Leben und Wesen Vieler, indem man sich selber nicht als starres,
bestГѓВ¤ndiges, Eines Individuum behandelt.
A philosophical frame of mind. Generally we strive to acquire one emotional stance, one viewpoint
for all life situations and events: we usually call that being of a philosophical frame of mind. But
rather than making oneself uniform, we may find greater value for the enrichment of knowledge by
listening to the soft voice of different life situations; each brings its own views with it. Thus we
acknowledge and share the life and nature of many by not treating ourselves like rigid, invariable,
single individuals.
Verkehr mit dem hГѓВ¶heren Selbst. - Ein jeder hat seinen guten Tag, wo er sein hГѓВ¶heres Selbst
findet; und die wahre HumanitГѓВ¤t verlangt, jemanden nur nach diesem Zustande und nicht nach
den Werktagen der Unfreiheit und Knechtung zu schГѓВ¤tzen. Man soll zum Beispiel einen Maler
nach seiner hГѓВ¶chsten Vision, die er zu sehen und darzustellen vermochte, taxiren und verehren.
Aber die Menschen selber verkehren sehr verschieden mit diesem ihrem hГѓВ¶heren Selbst und sind
hГѓВ¤ufig ihre eigenen Schauspieler, insofern sie Das, was sie in jenen Augenblicken sind, spГѓВ¤ter
immer wieder nachmachen. Manche leben in Scheu und Demuth vor ihrem Ideale und mГѓВ¶chten es
verleugnen: sie fГѓВјrchten ihr hГѓВ¶heres Selbst, weil es, wenn es redet, anspruchsvoll redet. Dazu
hat es eine geisterhafte Freiheit zu kommen und fortzubleiben wie es will; es wird desswegen
hГѓВ¤ufig eine Gabe der GГѓВ¶tter genannt, wГѓВ¤hrend eigentlich alles Andere Gabe der GГѓВ¶tter (des
Zufalls) ist: jenes aber ist der Mensch selber.
Traffic with one's higher self. Everyone has his good day, when he finds his higher self; and true
humanity demands that we judge someone only when he is in this condition, and not in his
workdays of bondage and servitude. We should, for example, assess and honor a painter according
to the highest vision he was able to see and portray. But people themselves deal very differently
with this, their higher self, and often act out the role of their own self, to the extent that they later
keep imitating what they were in those moments. Some regard their ideal with shy humility and
would like to deny it: they fear their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks demandingly. In
addition, it has a ghostly freedom of coming or staying away as it wishes; for that reason it is often
called a gift of the gods, while actually everything else is a gift of the gods (of chance): this,
however, is the man himself.
Leben und Erleben. - Sieht man zu, wie Einzelne mit ihren Erlebnissen - ihren unbedeutenden
alltГѓВ¤glichen Erlebnissen - umzugehen wissen, so dass diese zu einem Ackerland werden, das
dreimal des Jahres Frucht trГѓВ¤gt; wГѓВ¤hrend Andere - und wie Viele! - durch den Wogenschlag der
aufregendsten Schicksale, der mannigfaltigsten Zeit- und VolksstrГѓВ¶mungen hindurchgetrieben
werden und doch immer leicht, immer obenauf, wie Kork, bleiben: so ist man endlich versucht, die
Menschheit in eine MinoritГѓВ¤t (MinimalitГѓВ¤t) Solcher einzutheilen, welche aus Wenigem Viel zu
machen verstehen: und in eine MajoritГѓВ¤t Derer, welche aus Vielem Wenig zu machen verstehen; ja
man trifft auf jene umgekehrten Hexenmeister, welche, anstatt die Welt aus Nichts, aus der Welt ein
Nichts schaffen.
Life and experience. If one notices how some individuals know how to treat their experiences (their
insignificant everyday experiences) so that these become a plot of ground that bears fruit three
times a year; while others (and how many of them!) are driven through the waves of the most
exciting turns of fate, of the most varied currents of their time or nation, and yet always stay lightly
on the surface, like cork: then one is finally tempted to divide mankind into a minority (minimality) of
those people who know how to make much out of little and a majority of those who know how to
make a little out of much; indeed, one meets those perverse wizards who, instead of creating the
world out of nothing, create nothing out of the world.
Wir sind im Wesentlichen noch dieselben Menschen, wie die des Zeitalters der Reformation: wie
sollte es auch anders sein? Aber dass wir uns einige Mittel nicht mehr erlauben, um mit ihnen
unsrer Meinung zum Siege zu verhelfen, das hebt uns gegen jene Zeit ab und beweist, dass wir
einer hГѓВ¶hern Cultur angehГѓВ¶ren. Wer jetzt noch, in der Art der Reformations-Menschen,
Meinungen mit VerdГѓВ¤chtigungen, mit WuthausbrГѓВјchen bekГѓВ¤mpft und niederwirft, verrГѓВ¤th
deutlich, dass er seine Gegner verbrannt haben wГѓВјrde, falls er in anderen Zeiten gelebt hГѓВ¤tte,
und dass er zu allen Mitteln der Inquisition seine Zuflucht genommen haben wГѓВјrde, wenn er als
Gegner der Reformation gelebt hГѓВ¤tte. Diese Inquisition war damals vernГѓВјnftig, denn sie
bedeutete nichts Anderes, als den allgemeinen Belagerungszustand, welcher ГѓВјber den ganzen
Bereich der Kirche verhГѓВ¤ngt werden musste, und der, wie jeder Belagerungszustand, zu den
ГѓВ¤ussersten Mitteln berechtigte, unter der Voraussetzung nГѓВ¤mlich (welche wir jetzt nicht mehr mit
jenen Menschen theilen), dass man die Wahrheit, in der Kirche, habe, und um jeden Preis mit jedem
Opfer zum Heile der Menschheit bewahren mГѓВјsse. Jetzt aber giebt man Niemandem so leicht
mehr zu, dass er die Wahrheit habe: die strengen Methoden der Forschung haben genug
Misstrauen und Vorsicht verbreitet, so dass Jeder, welcher gewaltthГѓВ¤tig in Wort und Werk
Meinungen vertritt, als ein Feind unserer jetzigen Cultur, mindestens als ein zurГѓВјckgebliebener
empfunden wird. In der That: das Pathos, dass man die Wahrheit habe, gilt jetzt sehr wenig im
VerhГѓВ¤ltniss zu jenem freilich milderen und klanglosen Pathos des Wahrheit-Suchens, welches
nicht mГѓВјde wird, umzulernen und neu zu prГѓВјfen.
Essentially, we are still the same people as those in the period of the Reformation - and how should
it be otherwise? But we no longer allow ourselves certain means to gain victory for our opinion: this
distinguishes us from that age and proves that we belong to a higher culture. These days, if a man
still attacks and crushes opinions with suspicions and outbursts of rage, in the manner of men during
the Reformation, he clearly betrays that he would have burnt his opponents, had he lived in other
times, and that he would have taken recourse to all the means of the Inquisition, had he lived as an
opponent of the Reformation. In its time, the Inquisition was reasonable, for it meant nothing other
than the general martial law which had to be proclaimed over the whole domain of the church, and
which, like every state of martial law, justified the use of the extremest means, namely under the
assumption (which we no longer share with those people) that one possessed truth in the church
and had to preserve it at any cost, with any sacrifice, for the salvation of mankind. But now we will
no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread
sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in
word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact,
the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle
and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing
anew.
Who is the most moral man? First, he who obeys the law most frequently, who ... is continually
inventive in creating opportunities for obeying the law. Then, he who obeys it even in the most
difficult cases. The most moral man is he who sacrifices the most to custom. ... Self-overcoming is
demanded, not on account of any useful consequences it may have for the individual, but so that
hegemony of custom and tradition shall be made evident.
Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has hitherto always first been accounted a bad
man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was
accepted, the predicate gradually changed: - history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who
subsequently became good men!
Benefiting and hurting others are ways of exercising one's power upon others; that is all one desires
in such cases. One hurts those whom one wants to feel one's power, for pain is a much more
efficient means to that end than pleasure; pain always raises the question about its origin while
pleasure is inclined to stop with itself without looking back. We benefit and show benevolence to
those who are already dependent on us in some way (which means that they are used to thinking of
us as causes); we want to increase their power because in that way we increase ours, or we want to
show them how advantageous it is to be in our power; that way they will become more satisfied with
their condition and more hostile to and willing to fight against the enemies of our power.
God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the
murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has
bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean
ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the
greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear
worthy of it?
For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the
greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your
ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors
as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be
past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for
knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!
It is true that there are men who, on the approach of severe pain, hear the very opposite call of
command, and never appear more proud, more martial, or more happy than when the storm is
brewing; indeed, pain itself provides them with their supreme moments! These are the heroic men,
the great pain-bringers of mankind: those few and rare ones who need just the same apology as
pain generally — and verily, it should not be denied them. They are forces of the greatest
importance for preserving and advancing the species, be it only because they are opposed to smug
ease, and do not conceal their disgust at this kind of happiness.
Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will to inflict great pain?
The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain
masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and
hears the cry of it — that is great, that belongs to greatness.
The heaviest burden: “What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your
loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to
live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and
every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life must
return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight
between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned
over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and
gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a
tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I
heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you
as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once
more and innumerable times more?― would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how
well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than
this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?.
We "conserve" nothing; neither do we want to return to any past periods; we are not by any means
"liberal"; we do not work for "progress"; we do not need to plug up our ears against the sirens who in
the market place sing of the future: their song about "equal rights," "a free society," "no more
masters and no servants" has no allure for us.
We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on
earth (because it would certainly be the realm of the deepest leveling and chinoiserie); we are
delighted with all who love, as we do, danger, war, and adventures, who refuse to compromise, to
be captured, reconciled, and castrated; we count ourselves among conquerors; we think about the
necessity for new orders, also for a new slavery — for every strengthening and enhancement of the
human type also involves a new kind of enslavement.
Is it not clear that with all this we are bound to feel ill at ease in an age that likes to claim the
distinction of being the most humane, the mildest, and the most righteous age that the sun has ever
seen? It is bad enough that precisely when we hear these beautiful words we have the ugliest
suspicions. What we find in them is merely an expression — and a masquerade — of a profound
weakening, of weariness, of old age, of declining energies. What can it matter to us what tinsel the
sick may use to cover up their weakness? Let them parade it as their virtue; after all, there is no
doubt that weakness makes one mild, oh so mild, so righteous, so inoffensive, so "humane"!
Preparatory human beings. — I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin,
which will restore honor to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher,
and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day — the age that will carry
heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their
consequences.
To this end we now need many preparatory courageous human beings who cannot very well leap
out of nothing — any more than out of the sand and slime of present-day civilization and
metropolitanism: human beings who know how to be silent, lonely, resolute, and content and
constant in invisible activities; human beings who are bent on seeking in all things for what in them
must be overcome; human beings distinguished as much by cheerfulness, patience,
unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance
regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; human beings whose judgment concerning all victors
and the share of chance in every victory and fame is sharp and free; human beings with their own
festivals, their own working days, and their own periods of mourning, accustomed to command with
assurance but instantly ready to obey when that is called for, equally proud, equally serving their
own cause in both cases; more endangered human beings, more fruitful human beings, happier
beings!
Welches ist der groГѓЕёe Drache, den der Geist nicht mehr Herr und Gott heiГѓЕёen mag? "Du-sollst"
heiГѓЕёt der groГѓЕёe Drache. Aber der Geist des LГѓВ¶wen sagt "ich will". "Du-sollst" liegt ihm am
Wege, goldfunkelnd, ein Schuppentier, und auf jeder Schuppe glГѓВ¤nzt golden "Du sollst!"
TausendjГѓВ¤hrige Werte glГѓВ¤nzen an diesen Schuppen, und also spricht der mГѓВ¤chtigste aller
Drachen: "aller Wert der Dinge - der glГѓВ¤nzt an mir." "Aller Wert ward schon geschaffen, und aller
geschaffene Wert - das bin ich. Wahrlich, es soll kein 'Ich will' mehr geben!" Also spricht der Drache.
Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name of
the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will." "Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like
gold, an animal covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou shalt." Values,
thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all the dragons: "All
value of all things shines on me. All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily,
there shall be no more 'I will.'" Thus speaks the dragon.
Seht sie klettern, diese geschwinden Affen! Sie klettern ГѓВјber einander hinweg und zerren sich
also in den Schlamm und die Tiefe. Hin zum Throne wollen sie Alle: ihr Wahnsinn ist es, — als ob
das Glück auf dem Throne sässe! Oft sitzt der Schlamm auf dem Thron — und oft auch der
Thron auf dem Schlamme. Wahnsinnige sind sie mir Alle und kletternde Affen und ГѓЕ“berheisse.
ГѓЕ“bel riecht mir ihr GГѓВ¶tze, das kalte Unthier: ГѓВјbel riechen sie mir alle zusammen, diese
GГѓВ¶tzendiener.
Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one
another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if
happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud.
Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold
monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
Wenn die Macht gnГѓВ¤dig wird und herabkommt ins Sichtbare: SchГѓВ¶nheit heiГѓЕёe ich solches
Herabkommen. Und von niemandem will ich so als von dir gerade SchГѓВ¶nheit, du Gewaltiger: deine
GГѓВјte sei deine letzte Selbst-ГѓЕ“berwГѓВ¤ltigung. Alles BГѓВ¶se traue ich dir zu: darum will ich von dir
das Gute. Wahrlich, ich lachte oft der SchwГѓВ¤chlinge, welche sich gut glauben, weil sie lahme
Tatzen haben!
When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible — such descent I call beauty. And
there is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness
be your final self-conquest. Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you.
Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no
claws.
Also aber rathe ich euch, meine Freunde: misstraut Allen, in welchen der Trieb, zu strafen, mГѓВ¤chtig
ist! Das ist Volk schlechter Art und Abkunft; aus ihren Gesichtern blickt der Henker und der
SpГѓВјrhund. Misstraut allen Denen, die viel von ihrer Gerechtigkeit reden! Wahrlich, ihren Seelen
fehlt es nicht nur an Honig. Und wenn sie sich selber 'die Guten und Gerechten' nennen, so
vergesst nicht, dass ihnen zum Pharisäer Nichts fehlt als — Macht!
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! They
are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the
sleuth-hound. Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is
lacking. And when they call themselves 'the good and just,' forget not, that for them to be Pharisees,
nothing is lacking but — power! (Thomas Common translation)
Ach, es gibt so viel Dinge zwischen Himmel und Erde, von denen sich nur die Dichter etwas haben
trГѓВ¤umen lassen. Und zumal ГѓВј b e r dem Himmel: denn alle GГѓВ¶tter sind Dichter-Gleichnis,
Dichter-Erschleichnis! Wahrlich, immer zieht es uns hinan - nГѓВ¤mlich zum Reich der Wolken: auf
diese setzen wir unsre bunten BГѓВ¤lge und heiГѓЕёen sie dann GГѓВ¶tter und ГѓЕ“bermenschen: - Sind
sie doch gerade leicht genug fГѓВјr diese StГѓВјhle! - alle diese GГѓВ¶tter und ГѓЕ“bermenschen. Ach,
wie bin ich all des UnzulГѓВ¤nglichen mГѓВјde, das durchaus Ereignis sein soll! Ach, wie bin ich der
Dichter mГѓВјde!
Alas, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed.
And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poets' parables, poets' prevarications. Verily, it
always lifts us higher — specifically, to the realm of the clouds: upon these we place our motley
bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs — all
these gods and overmen. Ah, how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become
event! Ah, how weary I am of poets!
Und wer unter Menschen nicht verschmachten will, muГѓЕё lernen, aus allen GlГѓВ¤sern zu trinken;
und wer unter Menschen rein bleiben will, muГѓЕё verstehn, sich auch mit schmutzigem Wasser zu
waschen. Und also sprach ich oft mir zum Troste: "Wohlan! Wohlauf! Altes Herz! Ein UnglГѓВјck
miГѓЕёriet dir: genieГѓЕёe dies als dein - GlГѓВјck!"
O meine BrГѓВјder, ich weihe und weise euch zu einem neuen Adel: ihr sollt mir Zeuger und
ZГѓВјchter werden und SГѓВ¤emГѓВ¤nner der Zukunft, - wahrlich, nicht zu einem Adel, den ihr kaufen
kГѓВ¶nntet gleich den KrГѓВ¤mern und mit KrГѓВ¤mer-Golde: denn wenig Wert hat alles, was seinen
Preis hat. Nicht, woher ihr kommt, mache euch fГѓВјrderhin eure Ehre, sondern wohin ihr geht! Euer
Wille und euer Fuß, der über euch selber hinaus will, — das mache eure neue Ehre!
O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and
cultivators and sowers of the future — verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers
and with shopkeepers' gold: for whatever has its price has little value. Not whence you came shall
henceforth constitute your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot which has a will
to go over and beyond yourselves — that shall constitute your new honor.
O meine BrГѓВјder, nicht zurГѓВјck soll euer Adel schauen, sondern h i n a u s ! Vertriebene sollt ihr
sein aus allen Vater- und UrvГѓВ¤terlГѓВ¤ndern! Eurer Kinder Land sollt ihr lieben: diese Liebe sei euer
neuer Adel, — das unentdeckte, im fernsten Meere! Nach ihm heiße ich eure Segel suchen und
suchen! An euren Kindern sollt ihr gut machen, daГѓЕё ihr eurer VГѓВ¤ter Kinder seid: alles
Vergangene sollt ihr so erlГѓВ¶sen! Diese neue Tafel stelle ich ГѓВјber euch!
O my brothers, your nobility should not look backward but ahead! Exiles shall you be from all fatherand forefather-lands! Your children's land shall you love: this love shall be your new nobility — the
undiscovered land in the most distant sea. For that I bid your sails search and search. In your
children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is
past. This new tablet I place over you.
There still shines the most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men
of a higher rank. They designate themselves simply by their superiority in power (as "the powerful,"
"the masters," "the commanders") or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example,
as "the rich," "the possessors" (this is the meaning of 'Arya,' and of corresponding words in Iranian
and Slavic).
As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most
impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny
proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in the world
history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly
come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.
My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains
by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I give an example. Liberal institutions cease to
be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers
of freedom than liberal institutions. One knows, indeed, what their ways bring: they undermine the
will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly,
and hedonistic [genüsslich] — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them.
Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization ...
The doctrine of equality! … But there is no more venomous poison in existence: for it appears to be
preached by justice itself, when it is actually the end of justice … "Equality to the equal; inequality
to the unequal" — that would be true justice speaking: and its corollary, "never make the unequal
equal".
Die Lehre von der Gleichheit! ... Aber es giebt gar kein giftigeres Gift: denn sie scheint von der
Gerechtigkeit selbst gepredigt, wГѓВ¤hrend sie das Ende der Gerechtigkeit ist... "Den Gleichen
Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches - das wГѓВ¤re die wahre Rede der Gerechtigkeit: und, was
daraus folgt, Ungleiches niemals gleich machen."
These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they
really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects,
the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war
educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one
maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties,
hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's
cause, not excluding oneself.
Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other
instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free — and
how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being
dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free
man is a warrior. —
How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which must be overcome,
by the effort [MГѓВјhe] it costs to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought
where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold
of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and
dreadful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves — most
beautiful type: Julius Caesar — ; this is true politically too; one need only go through history. The
nations which were worth something, became worth something, never became so under liberal
institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone
acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit — and forces
us to be strong ...
First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong. — Those
large hothouses [TreibhГѓВ¤user] for the strong, for the strongest kind of human being that has ever
been, the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in
the sense in which I understand the word freedom: as something one has and does not have,
something one wants, something one conquers ...
Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized
joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality
can dash it—so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this
world.
As an artistic triumph in psychological corruption ... the Gospels, in fact, stand alone ... Here we are
among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter.
This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal "holiness" unmatched anywhere else,
either in books or by men; this elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art — all this
is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any violation of nature. The thing
responsible is race.
"Do I still have to add that in the entire New Testament there is only one solitary figure one is
obliged to respect? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take a Jewish affair seriously - he cannot
persuade himself to do that. One Jew more or less - what does it matter ?... The noble scorn of a
Roman before whom an impudent misuse of the word 'truth' was carried on has enriched the New
Testament with the only expression which possesses value - which is its criticism, its annihilation
even: 'What is truth?..."
The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who "reduced to absurdity" "the wisdom of this world"
(especially the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth only an
indication of Paul's resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one's own
will the name of God, Torah — that is essentially Jewish.
Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala apostles, who
undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker’s sense of satisfaction with his small
existence–who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal
rights but the claim of “equal― rights.
Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for
us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain,
which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of
Rome and Greece, was trampled down ( — I do not say by what sort of feet — ) Why? Because it
had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin — because it said yes to life, even to the rare
and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which
it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust — a civilization beside which
even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile."[...] Intrinsically there should
be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The
decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala
or he is not.... “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!―: this was the
feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II.
I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German
blood. When I look for my diametric opposite, an immeasurably shabby instinct, I always think of my
mother and sister, — it would blaspheme my divinity to think I am related to this sort of canaille.
The way my mother and sister treat me to this very day is a source of unspeakable horror; a real
time bomb is at work here, which can tell with unerring certainty the exact moment I can be hurt —
in my highest moments, … because at that point I do not have the strength to resist poison worms
…
Der Wille zur Macht (1888) is an anthology of material from Nietzsche's notebooks of the 1880s,
edited by his friend Peter Gast, supervised by his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche, and misrepresented by
her as his unpublished magnum opus. All but 16 of its 1067 fragments can be traced to source texts
in the historical-critical edition of Nietzsche's writings, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, though 204
of the 1067 sections involve patching together paragraphs not originally juxtaposed by Nietzsche, or
dividing continuous passages into multiple "aphorisms" and re-arranging their order, and much of
the text has been lightly edited to correct punctuation errors. Because of its misrepresentation of
Nietzsche's private notes as an all but finished magnum opus, it has been called a "historic forgery".
To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness,
ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound
self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for
them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not
— that one endures.
A declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed! ... Everything that makes soft and
effeminate, that serves the end of the people or the feminine, works in favor of universal suffrage,
i.e. the domination of the inferior men. But we should take reprisal and bring this whole affair to light
and the bar of judgment.
The homogenizing of European man ... requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign
species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a
master race whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of
strength ... strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.
There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of "aristocrats of the spirit,"
reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something. As is well known, it is a favorite term
among ambitious Jews. For spirit alone does not make noble. Rather, there must be something to
ennoble the spirit. What then is required? Blood.
It is Nietzsche’s merit that he was aware that to philosophize is radically problematic in the
cultural, historicist dispensation. He recognized the terrible intellectual and moral risks involved. At
the center of his every thought was the question “How is it possible to do what I am doing?―
He tried to apply to his own thought the teachings of cultural relativism. This practically nobody else
does. For example, Freud says that men are motivated by desire for sex and power, but be did not
apply those motives to explain his own science or his own scientific activity. But if he can be a true
scientist, i.e., motivated by love of the truth, so can other men, and his description of their motives is
thus mortally flawed. Or if he is motivated by sex or power, he is not a scientist, and his science is
only one means among many possible to attain those ends. This contradiction runs throughout the
natural and social sciences. They give an account of things that cannot possibly explain the conduct
of their practitioners.
One indication of the importance of Nietzsche is the pantheon of major twentieth century
intellectuals whom he influenced. ¶ He was an influence on Jean-Paul Sartre and Hermann Hesse,
major writers, both of whom won Nobel Prizes. He was an influence on thinkers as diverse in their
outlooks as Ayn Rand and Michel Foucault. Rand’s politics are classically liberal -- while
Foucault’s are far Left, including a stint as a member of the French Communist Party. There is
the striking fact that Nietzsche was an atheist, but he was an influence on Martin Buber, one of the
most widely-read theologians of the twentieth century. And Nietzsche said harsh things about the
Jews [...] but he was nonetheless admired by Chaim Weizmann, a leader of the Zionist movement
and first president of Israel.
Rohde became more and more firmly bound to the bourgeois world, its institutions and accepted
opinions. … The contrast between the two natures makes Rohde and Nietzsche exemplary
representatives of two distinctive worlds. In their youth they both live in the realm of boundless
possibilities and feel an affinity through the exuberance of their noble aspirations. Subsequently they
go in opposite directions. Nietzsche remains young, leaving concrete reality as his task assumes
existential import. Rohde grows old, bourgeois, stable, and skeptical. Hence courage is a
fundamental trait in Nietzsche, plaintive self-irony in Rohde. … Rohde retained the interests but not
the attitudes of his youth; he looked to the world of the Greeks for the object of his contemplation
rather than the norm of obligation.
By the middle of the [Eighteenth] century what Nietzsche was later to call a transvaluation of all
values was in full blast. Nothing sacred was spared—not even the classical spirit that had been the
chief attainment of the Renaissance—and of the ideas and attitudes that were attacked not many
survived. It was no longer necessary to give even lip service to the old preposterous certainties,
whether theological or political, aesthetic or philosophical. In France, Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot
were making a bonfire of all the ancient Christian superstitions; in England Gibbon was preparing to
revive the long dormant art of history and Adam Smith was laying the foundations of the new
science of economics; in Germany Kant was pondering an ethical scheme that that would give the
Great Commandment a rational basis...
Along with ignoring the French Revolution, one of the most telling features of the new books on
atheism [cf. new atheism ] is their consistent refusal to engage Nietzsche, who, if read correctly,
ought to make atheists squirm far more than he has ever caused discomfit to believers. ¶ First, he
turned the critical methods of the Enlightenment against their inventors and showed that
Enlightened faith in progress was just as illusory as belief in an afterlife. Second, he demanded that
a critical philosophy stop pretending to be a substitute religion (he shrewdly called Hegelian idealism
“insidious theology―). Third, he insisted on the indissoluble bond between Christian doctrine
and Christian morality and poured contempt on novelists like George Eliot for supposing otherwise
[...] ¶ Perhaps this why Nietzsche said in Ecce Homo, “the most serious Christians have
always been well disposed toward me.― For they at least, unlike Dawkins, Harris, Daniel Dennett
and Christopher Hitchens, can see that after Nietzsche a moral critique of the Christian God has
become impossible, for it denies the very presupposition that makes its own critique possible. Like
Abraham asking if the Lord God of justice could not himself do justice, protest atheism must accept
the very norms that Nietzsche showed are essential to the meaning of belief. In Nietzsche alone one
reads what the world really looks like si Deus non sit [if God does not exist].
Speaking of Spinoza he [Nietzsche] says: "How much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this
masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!" Exactly the same may be said of him, with the less
reluctance since he has not hesitated to say it of Spinoza. It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is
a warrior, not a professor; all the men he admires were military. His opinion of women, like every
man's, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear. "[Thou
goest to woman?] Forget not thy whip"—but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from
him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind
remarks.
It does not occur to Nietzsche as possible that a man should genuinely feel universal love, obviously
because he himself feels almost universal hatred and fear, which he would fain disguise as lordly
indifference. His "noble" man—who is himself in day-dreams—is a being wholly devoid of
sympathy, ruthless, cunning, cruel, concerned only with his own power. King Lear, on the verge of
madness, says: "I will do such things—What they are yet I know not—but they shall be The terror
of the earth." This is Nietzsche's philosophy in a nutshell.
This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the
name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What
must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers
to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian
nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and
specially Rousseau. But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is
reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy
has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a
prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards. The second step, degrading human thought
yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that
struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the
weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the
childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but
only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading
figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the
answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of
others. If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and
brutalization (not forgeting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were
defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary
success of Nietzsche's works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this. Some disjointed writings,
striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal
German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings
justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings
would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the
so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and
countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.
The whole world knows that virtue consists in the subjugation of one's passions, or in
self-renunciation. It is not just the Christian world, against whom Nietzsche howls, that knows this,
but it is an eternal supreme law towards which all humanity has developed, including Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, and the ancient Persian religion. And suddenly a man appears who
declares that he is convinced that self-renunciation, meekness, submissiveness and love are all
vices that destroy humanity (he has in mind Christianity, ignoring all the others religions). One can
understand why such a declaration baffled people at first. But after giving it a little thought and failing
to find any proof of the strange propositions, any rational person ought to throw the books aside and
wonder if there is any kind of rubbish that would not find a publisher today. But this has not
happened with Nietzsche´s books. The majority of pseudo-enlightened people seriously look into
the theory of the ГѓВјbermensch, and acknowledge its author to be a great philosopher, a
descendant of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. And all this has come about because the majority of
pseudo-enlightened men of today object to any reminder of virtue, or to its chief premise:
self-renunciation and love -virtues that restrain and condemn the animal side of their life. They gladly
welcome a doctrine, however incoherently and disjointedly expressed, of egotism and cruelty,
sanctioning the idea of personal happiness and superiority over the lives of others, by which they
live.
Nietzsche does not favor reckless, anarchic action. The model of the artist, and more specifically the
musician, is important. Rhythm is of the essence; timing of notes, of actions, allows for a style that is
cohesive, even if not uniform. The music that emerges comes out over time, it becomes and
develops slowly into a whole that is effective if timed well. Again Nietzsche sees that artists,
especially musicians and poets, have such a talent. And to the extent that a writer writes poetically,
he also shares in this talent.
There continue to be complex debates about what Nietzsche understood truth to be. Quite certainly,
he did not think, in pragmatist spirit, that beliefs are true if they serve our interests or welfare: we
have just seen some of his repeated denials of this idea. The more recently fashionable view is that
he was the first of the deniers, thinking that there is no such thing as truth, or that truth is what
anyone thinks it is, or that it is a boring category that we can do without. This is also wrong, and
more deeply so. Nietzsche did not think that the ideal of truthfulness went into retirement when its
metaphysical origins were discovered, and he did not suppose, either, that truthfulness could be
detached from a concern for the truth. Truthfulness as an ideal retains its power, and so far from his
seeing truth as dispensable or malleable, his main question is how it can be made bearable.
But if there was decadence, what was decaying? Religious faith and moral codes that had been in
place since time was, said Nietzsche, who in 1882 made the most famous statement in modern
philosophy — "God is dead" — and three startlingly accurate predictions for the twentieth century.
He even estimated when they would begin to come true: about 1915. (1) The faith men formerly
invested in God they would now invest in barbaric "brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and
exploitation of the non-brothers." Their names turned out, in due course, to be the German Nazis
and the Russian Communists. (2) There would be "wars such as have never been waged on earth."
Their names turned out to be World War I and World War II. (3) There no longer would be Truth but,
rather, "truth" in quotation marks, depending upon which concoction of eternal verities the modem
barbarian found most useful at any given moment. The result would be universal skepticism,
cynicism, irony, and contempt. The First World War began in 1914 and ended in 1918. On cue, as if
Nietzsche were still alive to direct the drama, an entirely new figure, with an entirely new name,
arose in Europe: that embodiment of skepticism, cynicism, irony, and contempt, the Intellectual.

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