Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil
Chapter one
Prejudices of philosophers
Plato was more elitest than scientists who deal in
perception and account for today’s sensualism.
Thoughts come to us and think us. I think, therefore I am? Think
is me , therefore it is.
“Therefore, just as sensations (and indded many kinds of
sensations) are to be recognised as ingredients of the will, so, in the second
place, thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of the will there is a
ruling thought and let us not imagine it possible to sever thought from the
“willing,” as if the will would then remain over! .... the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking,
but it is above all an emotion, and in fact the emotion of comand. That which is termed “freedom of the will” is essentially the emotion of
supremacy in respect to him who must obey:
“I am free, ‘he’ must obey””
Will is action, control over ourselves. We think our thoughts originators but it is
freedom of the will.
We will order inthought.
We creat
.e it like atavars.
But our grammar sets paramaters.
How is the subject permitted?
Thinking only relates passions and desires.
It is just a
question of strong and weak wills.
Absolute free will or determinism don’t exist. It is a gradation (strong to weak). And both are interpretations.
“If a person should regard even the emotions of hatred,
envy,covetousness, and imperiousness as life - conditioning emotions, as
factors which must be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the general
economy of life (which must, therefore, be further devel
oped if life is to be further developed) he will suffer from
such a view of things as from sea-sickness.”
Chapter two - The Free Spirit
“How we have made everything around us clear and free and
easy and simple! how we have been able
to give our senses a passport to everything superficial.”
He hopes to find his ignorance. And play with it. Don’t get too serious and martyr - like. No philosopher has carried his point. Have your masks.
Isolated philosophers become bitter and vengeful. They want
to prove
r they
re right.
Isolate with arrogance, not bitterness.
Though better than the herd, no one is such a liar as the
indignant man.
We recognize base necessities and liimits of man and body
and ignore them.
He does all to be “difficultly understood”. He doesn’t want to be easy.
“It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is
a privilege of the strong. And whoever
attempts it even with the best right, but without being obliged to do so,
proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond
measure. He enters into a labyrinth ,he
maltiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with
it; notthe least of which is that no one can see how and where he losses his
way, becomes isolated, and is torn to piecemeal by some minotaur of
conscience.”
write for a chosen few, not believers in equality. That which serves the gighe
r class of men for nourishment or refreshment, must be
almost opison to an entirely different and lower order of human beings. Books for the general reader are always ill-
smelling books, the odor of paltry people clings to them. Wher the populace eat and drink, and even
where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink. One should not go into churches if one wishes to breathe pure
air.
In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without
the art of nuance.
Later on when the young soul, tortured by continual
disillusions, finally turns suspiciously aginst itself - still ardent and
savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience. how it revenges itself
for its long self- blinding.
In prehistory an action was inferred from its consequences.
This is the pre-moral period of manking; the imperative, “know theyself!” was
then still unknown. Later we get to the
action out of an intention “know thyself”.
Now, beyond that, the surmounting of morality in a certain
sense even the self-mounting of mora
lity is the
best.
The emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidioulsly enough
to create itself a good conscience.We have now to cease being “merely moral”
men! Apart form morality, such belief
is a folly which does little honor to us!
Why not? It is nothing more than
a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is, in fact, the
worst proved supposition in the world.
O Voltaire! O
humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in “the truth,”
and in the search for the truth; and if aman goes about it too humanely - I
wager he finds nothing.
Thinking only relates passions and desires.
Instead of cause and effect, use will and effect. That may be the ultimate base. Before logic was will.
past is buried under words to destroy or manipulate it.
Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely
because it makes people happy or virtuous.
A thing could be true, although it were in the highest degree injurious
and dangerous;
So that the strength of a mind might be measured b
y the amount of “truth” it could endure .
Wicked and unfortunate are more favourably situated and have
a greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the wicked who are happy - a species about whom moralists are silent.
Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more, around every
profound spirit there continually grows a mask. Totally honest people are growing a mask.
Every person is a prison and also a recess.
Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even the most suffering
and necessitous. Not to cleave to a
science, though it tempt one with the most valueable discoveries. Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor become
as a whole a victim to any of our specialties.
One must know how to conserve oneself.
The best test of independence.
The new generation of philosophers are tempters. It must be contrary to their pride, and also
contrary to their tast, that ther truth should still be truth for
everyone. My oopinion is mine
another person has not easily a right to it. One must renounce the bad taste
of wishing to agree with many peopel. Good is no longer good when one’s neighbour
takes it into his mouth. And how could
there be a “common good”? The
expression contradicts itself. That
which can be ommon is always of small
value. Great things are the abysses for
the profound.
WIll to life had to be increased. All evil peple are serve just as will for the elevation of the
human species as the opposite.
Chapter three - The Religious Mood
The faith of Christianity is painful. Wherever the religious
neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, we find it connected with three
dangerous prescrips as to regimen: solitude, fasting and sexual
abstinence.
How is the negation of will possible? How is the saint
possible? That seems to have been the
very question with which Schopenhauer made a start.
Protestants, namely, a sort of revolt, returns northerners
to their barbarous origins.
How strangely pious for northerner’s tastes are French
skeptics. How catholic, how un-german
does Auguste Compte’s sociology
seem.
Saints have strength of will. Old testament folks make
modern folks loook like house-animals.
Once upon a time men sacrifieced human beings to their
God. Then, during the moral epock of
mankind, they sacrificed to their God the strongest instincts they possessed.
End of sacrifice, end of truth , end of god. Sacrifice him.
The distance, and s it were the space around man, grows with
the strength of his intellectual vision and insight; his world becomes
profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into view.
Has it been observed to what extent outward idlensss or
semi-idleness, is necessary to a religious life. It vulgarises body and soul.
People now see religion as a curiosity. Comfortable, people are no longer either for
it or against it.
The practical indifference to religious matters in the midst
of which religious man has been born and brought up, usually sublimates itself
in his case into circumspection and
cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious men and things.
The philosopher, as we free spirits understand him - as the man
of the greatest responsibility who has the conscience for the general
development of mankind.
Asceticism and Puritism are almost indispensable means of
educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary
basensess and work itself upward to future supremacy. And finally to ordinary
men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to
exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot.
The curch worked for the preservation of the sick and
suffering, therefore, for the deterioration ft he European race.
Church imposed on itself the equation of “unworldliness”
with “unsensuousness” and “higher man”
It would make dionysis laugh.
Chapter four- apophthegms and interludes
He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously - and
even himself - only in relation to his pupils.
It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments
that makes men great me
n.
Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself.
He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself
thereby, as a despiser.
Heavy , melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to
their surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy - by hatred and love.
Who has not, at one time or another - sacrificed himself for
the sake of his good name?
When one trains one’s conscience, it kisses one while it
bites.
Not their love of humanity, but the imotence of their love,
prevents the Christians of to-day from
burning us.
By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.
The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to
turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.
The great epochs of our life are at the opints when we gain
courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.
The will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will
of another, or of several other, emotions.
There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him
to whom
it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day.
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished
to turn author - and that he didn’t not learn it better.
A nation is a detour of nature to arrive a six or seven
great men.-Yes and to get around them.
The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God. on that account he keeps so far away from
him: - the devil , in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge.
One is punished best for on’es virtues.
In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes
mistakes of opposite kinds; in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds
a mediocre man; and often even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very
remarkable man.
The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take
himself for a god.
Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for
what is most difficult to us. This is
the origin of many moral systems.
That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable
echo of what was formerly considered good -
the atavism of an old ideal.
“Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always
paradise:” so sy the most ancient and the most modern serpents.
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and
evil.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups,
parties, nations and epochs it is the rule.
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of
it one gets successfully through many a bad night.
One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one
has communicated it.
Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.
Christianity gave eros poison to drink; he did not die of
it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.
With regard to what “truthfulness” is, perhaps nobody has
ever been sufficiently truthful.
There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance
of wickedness.
Chapter five - The Natural History of Morals
People try to give morality a base, yet assume morality
first.
In its
ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is lawful for this
morality to be called into question.
“Apart from the value of such assertions as “there is a
categorical imperative in us,” one can always ask: What does such an assertion
indicate about him who makes it? There
are systems of morals which are meant to justify their author in the eyes of
other people; other systems of morals are meant to tranquillise him , and make
him self-satisfied; with other systems he wants t o crucify and humble hismelf;
with others he wishes to take revenge; with others to conceal himself; with
others to glorify himself and gain superiority and distinction; - this system
of morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something of
him, forgotten; many a moralist would like to exercise power and creative
arbitrariness over mankind; many another , perhapst Kant especially, gives us
to understand by his morals that “what is estimable in me, is that I know how
to obey - and with you it shall not be otherwise than
with me!” In short, systems of morals are only a
sign-language of the emotions.”
Every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against
“nature”. Obedience has made life orth
living. We get strength trying to bolster morality. This effort due to a fear of nature and a desire to limit our
horizons and perspectives.
Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it
was a master stroke of English instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to such an
extent that one unconsciously hankers for the work week again.
Fanatical epochs of morality seem like fasting designed to
purify and sharpen oneself.
Socrates took the side of reason. But he laughed at nobleman who could not bolster their actions
with reasons.
Our senses are averse to the new; and generally, even in the
“simpl4est”processes of sensation, the emotions dominate. We simplify all stimulus coming in into
categories and guesses because it is easier.
We becme accustomed to lying.Our waking life is colored by the
implications of our dreams.
People
do what they do to
be totally loved and thus in possession of others.
Views equated rich, godlesssensual with wicked, poverty and
saint. The world became negative. This
is an inversion of value, a slave insurrection in morality.
Philosophies can smell dangerously of the “other world”.
Whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness
towards the heated folly of the emotions (stoics) or the no-more-laughing and
no more weeping of Spinoza. or the
lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they may be satisfied by
Aristotle.
In all times there have been a great number who obey and a
small number who command.
Herd instinct is made by commanders of all sorts shouting -
parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices or public opinion.
Since we lived as herd, we’ve interiorized big “thou shalts”
as conscience.
In bad conscience European leaders try to show they care for
the opinion of the mob.
Most want the happiness of no inward conflict.
Fear is the mother of morals. Mediocrity of desires atta
ins to moral destinction and honour. Under peace there is less opportunity for
the training of the feelings to severity and rigour. Then every form of severity (even in justice) starts to disturb
the conscience.
Best your neighbor is replaced when thing are safe. fear is the mother of morals. When rapaciousness dies we die. All that
puts the individual above the herd is called dangerous.
“we wish that some tiem there may be nothing more to fear!”
This is now called progress all over Europe.
The democratic movement is the inheritor of the christian movment.
How can philosophers cat eternal values back? The european philopher has pain at the
littleness of “modern man”. He suffers
from the anguish of seeing what could still be made out of man.
Chapter six - We Scholars
One must have the right to one’s own experience. The scientific man is trying to take that
away.
Science successfully resisted theology. This is happyBut it is arrogant and , as a
result, has ill-will toawards all philosophy.
On
the whole, however, it may have been the humannes, all-too-humanness
of the modern philosophers themselves, which has injured most radically the
reverence for philsophy .
Lowly phil. is now reduced to a “theory of knowledge” How could such aphilosophy rule.
Examined closely the scientific man has common place
virtues. He is non-ruling.
Depersonalizing of the spirit is not a good goal. Disinterested knowledge is not a good goal.
Personality, to him seeking objective knowledge, seems
accidental, arbitrary or worse, disturbing.
Such a seeker readily confuses himself with others. He doesn’t take himslef esriously and devote
time to himself. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial.
If a philosopher says he is not a skeptic they act as if
they heard some evil-threatening sound in the distance.
Sceptics want you to be pessimistic moles.
This debilitation happens when races and cultures mix. Then
all is objectified. That which is most
diseased is the will. Decision goes away.
Art for arts sa
ke is only deckout out pessimistic skepticism and paralysis
of the will.
A possible jumpstart of the will would be to shatter the
empires into small states, more parlimentary imbecility and getting rid of the
obligation of everyone to read his newspaper at breakfast.
The time for petty poitics is past. The next century will
bring the struggle for the dominion of the world.
New philosophers will be experimenters in a wider and more
dangerous sense. They will go past what
a democratic age can approve of. They
will be sterner (and perhaps not just towards themselves) than humane people
may desire. They will not deal with the
“truth” in order that it may “please” them, or “elevate” and “inspire” them -
they will rather have little faith in “truth”
They will smile when folks say “that work enchants me, why should it not
be beautiful”
The real philosophers are commanders and law givers.
A real philosopher must be in contradiction to the age in
which he lives. They are the bad
conscience of their age. They
take a knife to the breatst of the very virtues of their
age.
They have contempt for the multitude with their duties and
virtues.
Chapter seven - Our Virtues
Let us be careful dealing with those who are moral. They never forgive us if they have once made
a mistake before us.
Morality as attitude!
Instinct is the best form of intelligence that has
heretofore been discovered.
The practice of judging and condemning morally is the
favorite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so. It makes up for themn being badly endowed by
nature. It gives them a chance to
acquire spirit and become subtle - Malice spritualists.
They are glad that there are standards by which the great
are equal to them.
Whoever offers sacrifice wants something for it.
Moral systems must be compelled first of all to bow before
the gradations of rank.
Intuition of class and rank of people and civilizations is
important. Civ and rankk should be the posts by which we anchor our identities.
Post modernist see all a
s equal and our souls run in chaos ppoorly.
A dissatisfaction with ones own condition. We couldn’t , in the enlightenment, enjoy
homer. There were no gods on earth or
above.
Our sympathy is loftier and further sighted. You see how you dwarf man-kind. Our greatness is our duty. But do what we will, fools and appearances
say of us: “these are men without duty,” - we have always fools and appearances
against us!
Every virtue incines to stupidity, every stupidity to
virtue. Be careful that virute and
honesty don’t turn you into saint or bore.
Life is too short to bore ourselves.
You would have to believe in eternal life to be so boring.
“virtue” has been more injured by the tediousness of its
advocates than by anthing else.
Moralists are the opposite of Puritans. They consider
morality as worthy of interrogation, a problem. Is moralising not immoral?
One ought to learn impatience. Almost everything we call “higher culture” is based upon the
spiritualising and intensifying of cruelty.
There is an
enjoyment in one’s own suffering and self-denial.
The seeker of knowledge compels his spirit to perceive
against its own inclination. In every
desire for knowledge there is a drop of cruelty.
The spirit wants to incorporate new experiences: the feeling
of growth, of power, is its object. That is the same for phony humility. Spirit thus has “digestive power”. It is
more like a stomach than anything else.
[this can be related to the one, which procedes the
intellect]
He that is accostomed to severe discipline and even severe
words will say “there is something cruel in the tendency of my spirit” let the
vieruous and amiable try to convince him that it is not so!
The “terrible original text” homo natura must again be
recognized. Learning alters, but deep
down there is the unalterable us.
WOMEN have spent 10,000 years in the kitchen and no science
has come of it! Just dumb
physiologically ignorant, feeding.
Equality is not to be had in the war of the sexes.
Women don’t fear men who don’t illlicit fear.
The manly is
god. To lose the feminine intuition as
the ground upon which she can win if for the woman to lose her proper weapons.
Elite societies have women and slaves in their places. She , instead of a power full cunning
flexible tiger claw incomprehensible, enchanting woman seeks to be another lame
man of today.
The dienchantment of woman is called progress in Europe!
Chapter Eight - Peoples and Countries
If a Hitler came, I don’t get the idea, but a styronger
(who?) could overthrow him.
In a modern uprooted society dangerous great men are possible.
The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are
caves, hiding places, and dungeons therein.
He is “good-natured and spiteful”
Sentences melodies must be heard for understanding. Andcients read everything aloud. They were great speakers, consequently
connoisseurs and critics.
What is most difficult to render from one language into
another is the tempo of its style, which has its basis in the character of the
race.
What Europe owes to the
Jews is a grand
style in morality and fearfulness and majest of infinite demants of infinite
significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral
questionableness. “we artists among the
spectators and philosophers, are - grateful to the Jews”
Nations are young, jews are old.
Jews aren’t trying to rule.
The proof is that they don’t yet rule.
Niet. fears they will assimilate.
The english are not a philosophical race. Bacon is an attack on philosophy in
spirit. Hobbes, Hume and Lock an
abasement. Kant rose against hume for
that reason.
They are middle class.
They don’t make values, but knowledge.
The capable man in the grand style, the creator, will
possibly have to be ignorant.
European noblesse - of sentiment and taste, and manners,
taking the word in every high sense - is the work and invention of France; the
European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas - is Englands work and
invention.
In the French there is a successful half-way synthesis of
the North and South.
Wagner, whose s
oul presses urgently and longingly, outwars and upwards , to
where? reflects thenew new Europe.
The weak sink into christianity because they are not strong
enough to be anti-christs.
Chapter nine- What is Noble?
The elevation of the type of man has been the work of an
aristocratic society and so it will always be.
Long scales of gradations of rank and differences and distance.
A outlooking and downlooking. A longing for the distance of the soul. Higher, rare further goes the
“self-surmounting man”
Every civilization starts with barbarians with a desire to
power that conquor the weaker more moral nations.The civilizations they take
over are weak. Not physically , but psychically. They were more complete men (more complete beasts).
When the french revolution flung away privileges with
sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments, it
wa scorruption. It was only the closing
act of corruption in which for centuries, aristocracy abdicated its lordly
prerogatives and lowered
itself to a function of royalty.
A healthy society must have the fundamental belief that
society doesn’t exist for its own sake, but as a scaffoding, by means of which
a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher
duties, and in general to a higher existence.
Levelling is a will to the denial of life.
It is the rulers who determine the conception of good. It is the exalted, proud disposition which
is regarded as distinguishing.
“good” and “Bad” meant the same as “noble” and
“despicable”. “Good” v. “evil” is of a
different origin.
It is a fundamental belief of aristocrats that the lower
classes are untruthful. The noble man
man does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgement: “ what is
injurious to me is injurious in itself”; he knows that is is he himself only
who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values.
Viking man are even proud of not being made for
sympathy. The hero of the Saga adds
warningly: “He who has not a hard heart when young, will never
have one.”
Reverence for traditional ancestors and unfavorable to
newcomers is typical in the morality of the powerful. The modern ideas of progress and the future are disrespectful of
heritage and its greatness.
One has duty to one’s equals. Act to those of ower rank as if they were foriegn, just as seems good to one , or as the heart
desires. Anyways “Beyond Good and
Evil”.
The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the
opwerful; he has a scepticism and distrust of all “good” that is honored.
Meek is considered good, and powerful, evil. MAster morality
the good man arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded
as the despicable being.
Since time immemorial, the ordinary man and slave were
ensconced in strata and had only the value the master gave to him. It is atavism that the ordinary man, today,
is still always waiting for an opinion about himself and submitting to good
opinion.
He doesnt’ think that aristocrats should be vain, but
modest, before their potential.
But they should not
be modest in front of the masses.
He who tries to seduce good opinion of others then, as a
whore woman, should reproach themselves.
Species originate and become strong in unfavorable
conditions. Good environs make diversity and monstrosities. Every aristocratic morality is intolerant. Intolerance is a virtue.
This strength leads to peace with neighbors. The constraints of this strength are
morality. Laxity/wealth make monstrosities. Old values are said to be “out of
date” Genius poors out perverse. All
that survives is mediocrity.
There is an instinct for rank, which more than anything else
is already the sign of a high rank.
There is a delight in the nuances of reverence which leads one to infer
noble origns and habits.
Obedience of rank shows the soul feels it is near what is
worthy of respect.
The reverence for the biible has been the best example of
discipline and refinement of manners in reference to something better.
Much has been achieved when the sentiment of reverenc
e has been installed into the masses that they are not
allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences before which they
must take off their shoes andkeep away the unclean hand. It is almost their highest advance towards
humanity. On the The contrary, in the
so called “modern ideas” nothing is so repulsive as their lack of shame. The
easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch , tast and finger
everything.
An apple doesnt fall far from the tree. And education seks to cover up the low
heredity these days.
The egoism belons to the essence of a noble soul. The unalterable belief that to a being such
as “we” other beings must naturally be in subjection.
[note the fall of the word “intercourse”]
People must have the same ideas to understand eachother.
cxommon things we get. Rarified are
misunderstood. That’s whyy they’re alone.
They can only communicate via simile.
The great are disappeared intheir work. Sympathy for the great, not the losers is
due.
Jesus demanded inexorably and
frantically to be
loved. He had to invent hell for those
who wouldn’t love him. THen he made a
god who is entirely love. He takes pity
on human love because it is so paltry.
Just as much as nobleness distinguishes it separates.
A man who strives after great things looks upon everyone
whom he encounters as either a means of advance or a delay and hindrance, or as
a temporary resting-place.
Genius bubles and waits for a proper time and place. He who does not wish to see the nobility in
man looks at what is low in him . He
thereby betrays himself.
A noble man shocks everybody at the table. Shrieks raves and finally withdraws, ashamed
and raging at himself. Why? Thrown into
the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does not like to eat out
of the smame dish, he may readily perish of hunger or thirst or fall into
sudden nausia.
The noble soul has reverence for itself.
Recluse philosophers never write their innermost. Books a
re written precisely to hide what is in us. Philosophers can’t have “ultimate and actual” opinions at all. every opinion is also a lurking-place, every
word is a mask.
Man, a complex inscrutable animal created conscience in
order to enjoy his soul as something simple.
The whole of morality is a falsification of virtue by which enjoyment,
not painful confusion, when looking at the soul becomes possible.
When great men have sympathy there is something to it. When
losers do it is pathetic. With the aid
of religion and philosophicla nonsense, it seeks to deck itsself out as
something superior. There is and
unmanly cult of suffering.
Religion has trumpery and pomp. But god doesn’t know what to do with this. He has no reason to comer his
nakedness.
Stronger is more evil and more profound and more
beautiful. Noone divines how we look in
the morning you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude,you, my old, beloved -
evil thoughts!
THE END
john press
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