Beyond Good and Evil (Part 9)

Having concluded reading Beyond Good and Evil, I here present the final excerpts and shall proceed with a wrap-up in the subsequent post:

260: "There are master morality and slave morality... It is the powerful who understand how to honor; this is their art, their realm of invention.  The profound reverence for age and tradition—all law rests on this double reverence—the faith and prejudice in favor of ancestors and disfavor of those yet to come are typical of the morality of the powerful; and when the men of 'modern ideas,' conversely, believe almost instinctively in 'progress' and 'the future' and more and more lack respect for age, this in itself would sufficiently betray the ignoble origin of these 'ideas'... A slave's eye is not favorable to the virtues of the powerful: he is skeptical and suspicious, subtly suspicious, of all the 'good' that is honored there—he would like to persuade himself that even their happiness is not genuine...here pity the complaisant and obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility, and friendliness are honored—for here these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence.

"According to slave morality, those who are 'evil' thus inspire fear; according to master morality it is precisely those who are 'good' that inspire, and wish to inspire, fear, while the 'bad' are felt to be contemptible... Wherever slave morality becomes preponderant, language tends to bring the words 'good' and 'stupid' closer together."

261: "It may be understood as the consequence of an immense atavism that even now the ordinary man still always waits for an opinion about himself and then instinctively submits to that—but by no means only a 'good' opinion; also a bad and unfair one (consider, for example, the great majority of the self-estimates and self-underestimates that believing women accept from their father-confessors, and believing Christians quite generally from their church.)"

262: "...nothing will stand the day after tomorrow, except one type of man, the incurably mediocre.  The mediocre alone have a chance of continuing their type and propagating—they are the men of the future, the only survivors: "Be like them!  Become mediocre!" is now the only morality that still makes sense, that still gets a hearing."

263: "Much has been gained once the feeling has finally been cultivated in the masses...that they are not to touch everything; that there are holy experiences before which they have to take off their shoes and keep away their unclean hands—this is almost their greatest advance toward humanity."

270: "It is possible that underneath the holy fable and disguise of Jesus' life there lies concealed one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of knowledge about love: the martyrdom of the most innocent and desirous heart, never sated by any human love; demanding love, to be loved and nothing else, with hardness, with insanity, with terrible eruptions against those who denied him love; the story of a poor fellow, unsated and insatiable in love, who had to invent hell in order to send to it those who did not want to love him—and who finally, having gained knowledge about human love, had to invent a god who is all love, all ability to love—who has mercy on human love because it is so utterly wretched and unknowing.  Anyone who feels that way, who knows this about love—seeks death."

273: "A human being who strikes for something great considers everyone he meets on his way either as a means or as a delay and obstacle—or as a temporary resting place."

274: "...in nooks all over the earth sit men who are waiting, scarcely knowing in what way they are waiting, much less that they are waiting in vain.  Occasionally the call that awakens—that accident which gives the 'permission' to act—comes too late, when the best youth and strength for action has already been used up by sitting still; and many have found to their horror when they 'leaped up' that their limbs had gone to sleep and their spirit had become too heavy."

282: "Probably all of us have sat at tables where we did not belong; and precisely the most spiritual among us, being hardest to nourish, know that dangerous dyspepsia which comes of a sudden insight and disappointment about our food and our neighbors at the table—the after-dinner nausea."


290: "Every profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.  The latter may hurt his vanity, but the former his heart, his sympathy, which always says: 'Alas, why do you want to have as hard a time as I did?"

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 8)

I took a bit of a break from Nietzsche, but since I'm so close, I'd say it's about time I picked up the pace. Not a lot of quotes that stood out this time, since the chapter is mostly directed toward Germany, but what I most enjoyed was Nietzsche's views on passion, how there was a time when passion used to be celebrated in people, whereas now it is considered indecent or insane to express one's passions in the public forum. He rails against society for reading alone, for failing to hear the rhythm of words, for lacking appreciation of worldly artistry. It makes me want to start exploring more open-mic nights. Anyone interested?

Also, I enjoyed how Nietzsche bad-mouthed 19th-century anti-Semitism. The fact that his work was misquoted in Nazi propaganda only serves to highlight the dangers of selective quoting. That said, I only leave quotes below for personal memory and hopefully to encourage readers to check out the book in its entirety.

243: “I hear with pleasure that our sun is swiftly moving toward the constellation of Hercules—and I hope that man on this earth will in this respect follow the sun’s example.”

246: “How many Germans know, and demand of themselves that they should know that there is art in every good sentence—art that must be figured out if the sentence is to be understood! A misunderstanding about its tempo, for example—and the sentence itself is misunderstood.”

248: “There are two types of genius: one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.”

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 7)

This particular section details the nature of virtue. Whilst reading it, I thought of a few of my own epigrams, to be displayed at the bottom. Thoughts much appreciated.

214: "It is probable that we, too, still have our virtues, although in all fairness they will not be the simpleminded and four-square virtues for which we hold our grandfathers in honor—and at arm's length."

217: "Blessed are the forgetful: for they get over their stupidities too."

219: "Moral judgments and condemnations constitute the favorite revenge of the spiritually limited against those less limited—also a sort of compensation for having been ill-favored by nature—finally an opportunity for acquiring spirit and becoming refined—malice spiritualized."

220: "...anyone who has really made sacrifices knows that he wanted and got something in return..."

227: "Our honesty, we free spirits—let us see to it that it does not become out vanity, our finery and pomp, our limit, our stupidity."

228: "May I be forgiven the discovery that all moral philosophy so far has been boring...

"Ultimately they all want English morality to be proved right—because this serves humanity best, or 'the general utility,' or 'the happiness of the greatest number'—no, the happiness of England."

The following occurred to me whilst reading:

• The truth is inevitable, notwithstanding the shape of its face.
• It is your right to believe what you wish and mine to convince you otherwise.
• The one who calls the world unchanging has only glimpsed its face; even the straight ocean horizon is made of waves.
• To the World-Deniers: If the Devil is the arch tempter, and God created an entire world of temptations, where do your loyalties lie?

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 6)

I'd never figured objectivity to be a negative trait, but when one puts it into perspective (see political correctness), it certainly can, when taken to extremes, make a populace into a bunch of sniveling, hyper-sensitive toads willing to shake their webbed fingers at anyone but dare not actually make a move.

207: "The objective man is indeed a mirror: he is accustomed to submit before whatever wants to be known, without any other pleasure than that found in knowing and 'mirroring;' he waits until something comes, and then spreads himself out tenderly lest light footsteps and the quick passage of spiritlike beings should be lost on his plane and skin...

"If love and hatred are wanted from him—I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them—he will do what he can and give what he can. But one should not be surprised if it is not much—If just here he proves inauthentic, fragile, questionable, and worm-eaten. His love is forced, his hatred artificial and rather un tour de force, a little vanity and exaggeration. After all, he is genuine only insofar as he may be objective: only in his cheerful 'totalism' he is still 'nature' and 'natural.'"


208: "Paralysis of the will: where today does one not find this cripple sitting? And odten in such finery! How seductive the finery looks! This disease enjoys the most beautiful pomp- and lie-costumes; and most of what today displays itself in the showcases, for example, as 'objectivity,''being scientific,' 'l'art pour l'art,' 'pure knowledge, free of will,' is merely dressed-up skepticism and paralysis of the will..."


212: "More and more it seems to me that the philosopher being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today."

Beyond Good and Evil (Part 5)

Further quotes that led me to think. Damn them and their intellectualism!


186: “And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute—the laede neminem morality— what? Is that really—a pessimist?”


189: “Industrious races find it very troublesome to endure leisure; it was a masterpiece of English instinct to make the Sabbath so holy and so boring that the English began unconsciously to lust again for their work- and week-day.”


192: “Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page—rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and ‘guesses’ at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words—just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us simply to improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its ‘inventors.’ All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are—accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows."


193: "What we experience in dreams—assuming that we experience is often—belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced 'actually': we are richer or poorer on account of it, have one need more or less, and finally are led a little by the habits of our dreams even in broad daylight and in the most cheerful moments of our wide-awake spirit."


194: "Among helpful and charitable people one almost regularly encounters that clumsy ruse which first doctors the person to be helped—as if, for example, he 'deserved' help, required just their help, and would prove to be profoundly grateful for all help, faithful and submissive. With these fancies they dispose of the needy as of possessions, being charitable and helpful people from a desire for possessions. One finds them jealous if one crosses or anticipates them when they want to help.

"Involuntarily, parents turn children into something similar to themselves—they call that 'education.' Deep in her heart, no mother doubts that the child she has borne is her property; no father contests his right to subject it to his concepts and valuations."


199:: "Inasmuch as at all times, as long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of men (clans, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many people who obeyed, compared with the small number of those commanding— considering, then, that nothing has been exercised and cultivated better and longer among men so far than obedience—it may fairly be assumed that the need for it is now so innate in the average man, as a kind of formal conscience that commands: "thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally not do something else," in short, "thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. According to its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes upon things as a rude appetite, rather indiscriminately, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ears by someone who issues commands—parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, public opinions."

Beyond Good and Evil (Parts 2-4)

Rather than go into long, elaborate detail about my perceptions of what I have read thus far in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (translated by Walter Kaufmann), I will rather share directly some of the content that has most struck me.


25. "...beware of martyrdom!  Of suffering 'for the truth's sake!'  Even of defending yourselves!  It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong against objections and red rags...you have to pose as protectors of truth upon earth--as though 'the truth' were such an innocuous and incompetent creature as to require protectors!"


26. "Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty, and the higher man must listen closely to every coarse or subtle cynicism, and congratulate himself when a clown without shame or a scientific satyr speaks out precisely in front of him."


30. "Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them."


39. "Nobody is very likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous--except perhaps the lovely 'idealists' who become effusive about the good, the true, and the beautiful and allow all kinds of motley, clumsy, and benevolent desiderata to swim around in utter confusion in their pond.  Happiness and virtue are no arguments.  But people like to forget--even sober spirits--that making unhappy and evil are no counterarguments."


40. "Whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable... A man whose sense of shame has some profundity encounters his destinies and delicate decisions, too, on paths which few ever reach and of whose mere existence his closest intimates must not know: his mortal danger is concealed from their eyes, and so is his regained sureness of life.  Such a concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends.  And supposing he did not want it, he would still realize some day that in spite of that a mask of him is there--and that this is well.  Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false, namely shallow, interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives."


41. "One has to test oneself to see that one is destined for independence and command--and do it at the right time.  One should not dodge one's tests, though they may be the most dangerous game one could play and are tests that are taken in the end before no witness or judge but ourselves."

"Not to remain stuck to a person--not even the most loved--every person is a prison, also a nook.  Not to remain stuck to a fatherland--not even if it suffers most and needs help most--it is less difficult to sever one's heart from a victorious fatherland.  Not to remain stuck to some pity--not even for higher men into whose rare torture and helplessness some accident allowed us to look.  Not to remain stuck to a science--even if it should lure us with the most precious finds that seem to have been saved up precisely for us.  Not to remain stuck to one's own detachment, to that voluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird who flees ever higher to see ever more below him--the danger of the flier.  Not to remain stuck to our own virtues and become as a whole the victim of some detail in us, such as our hospitality, which is in danger of the flier.  Not to remain stuck to our own virtues and become as a whole the victim of some detail in us, such as our hospitality, which is the danger of dangers for superior and rich souls who spend themselves lavishly, almost indifferently, and exaggerate the virtue of generosity into a vice.  One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence."


43. "One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many.  'Good' is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it.  And how should there be a 'common good!'  The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value."


46. "From the start, the Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation."


49. "What is amazing about the religiosity of the ancient Greeks is the enormous abundance of gratitude it exudes: it is a very noble type of man that confronts nature and life in this way."

"Later, when the rabble gained the upper hand in Greece, fear became rampant in religion, too--and the ground was prepared for Christianity."


55. "Finally--what remained to be sacrificed?  At long last, did one not have to sacrifice for once whatever is comforting, holy, healing; all hope, all faith in hidden harmony, in future blisses and justices?  Didn't one have to sacrifice God himself and, from cruelty against oneself, worship the stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, the nothing?  To sacrifice God for the nothing--this paradoxical mystery of the final cruelty was reserved for the generation that is now coming up: all of us already know something of this."


76. "Under peaceful conditions, a warlike man sets upon himself."


90. "Heavy, heavy-spirited people become lighter precisely through what makes others heavier, through hatred and love, and for a time they surface."


99. "The voice of disappointment: 'I listened for an echo and heard nothing but praise.'"


119. "There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day."


120. "Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up."


146. "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."


149. "What a time experiences as evil is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good—the atavism of a  more ancient ideal."


160. "One no longer loves one’s insight enough once one communicates it."