into hatred against earth and the earthly that is the task the church set and needed to set for itself until, in its estimation, 'unworldly,' 'unsensuous,' and 'higher man' finally melted together into a single feeling. If you could survey the strangely painful, crude yet subtle comedy of European Christianity with the mocking and disinterested eye of an Epicurean god, I think you would find it to be a constant source of amazement and laughter. Doesn't it seem as if, for eighteen centuries, Europe was dominated by the single will to turn humanity into a sublime abortion? But if somebody with opposite needs were to approach the almost willful degeneration and atrophy of humanity that the Christian European (Pascal for instance) has become, somebody whose manner is no longer Epicurean, but has instead some divine hammer in hand; wouldn't he have to yell out in rage, in pity, in horror: 'Oh you fools, you presumptuous, pitying fools, what have you donehere!Wasthatworkmeantforyourhands!Lookhowyou'vewrecked and ruined my most beautiful stone! Who gave you the right to do such a thing!' - What I mean is: Christianity has been the most disastrous form of arrogance so far. People who were not high and hard enough to give human beings artistic form; people who were not strong or far-sighted enough, who lacked the sublime self-discipline to give free reign to the foreground law of ruin and failure by the thousands; people who were not noble enough to see the abysmally different orders of rank and chasms in rank between different people. People like this , with their 'equality before God' have prevailed over the fate of Europe so far, until a stunted, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something well-meaning, sickly, and mediocre has finally been bred: the European of today ...


Genuine teachers only take things seriously where their students are concerned - even themselves. 'Knowledge for its own sake' - this is the final snare morality has laid; with it, we become completely entangled in morals once again. Knowledge would have little charm if there were not so much shame to be overcome in order to reach it. a People are at their least honest when it comes to their God: he is not allowed to sin! The tendency to let oneself be debased, robbed, lied to, and exploited could be the shame of a god among men. It is barbaric to love one thing alone, since this one love will be pursued at the expense of all others. This includes love of God. Epigrams and entr'actes 'I did that' says my memory. I couldn't have done that - says my pride, and stands its ground. Finally, memory gives in. You have been a poor observer of life if you have not also seen the hand that, ever so gently - kills. If you have character, you also have a typical experience that always comes back. The sage as astronomer. - If you still experience the stars as something 'over you,' you still don't have the eyes of a knower. It is not the strength but the duration of high feelings that makes for high men. Precisely by attaining an ideal, we surpass it. a Many peacocks hide their peacock tails - and call that their pride. A man with genius is insufferable if he doesn't have at least two more things: gratitude and cleanliness.


The degree and type of a person's sexuality reaches up into the further- most peaks of their spirit., Beyond Good and Evil = . The degree and type of a person's sexuality reaches up into the further- most peaks of their spirit., Beyond Good and Evil = . The degree and type of a person's sexuality reaches up into the further- most peaks of their spirit., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . In peaceful conditions, the warlike man will attack himself., Beyond Good and Evil = . In peaceful conditions, the warlike man will attack himself., Beyond Good and Evil = . In peaceful conditions, the warlike man will attack himself., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = want utterly different things from them.. , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . Asoul that knows it is loved but does not itself love exposes its sediment: - its bottom-most aspect rises to the top. An issue that has been resolved stops mattering to us. - What did that god whocounseled'Knowyourself!'reallymean?Wasitperhaps:'Stop letting anything matter to you! Become objective!' - And Socrates? - And the 'scientific man'? - It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. So do you have to salt your truth to the point where it doesn't quench thirst anymore? , Beyond Good and Evil = Asoul that knows it is loved but does not itself love exposes its sediment: - its bottom-most aspect rises to the top. An issue that has been resolved stops mattering to us. - What did that god whocounseled'Knowyourself!'reallymean?Wasitperhaps:'Stop letting anything matter to you! Become objective!' - And Socrates? - And the 'scientific man'? - It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. So do you have to salt your truth to the point where it doesn't quench thirst anymore? . Asoul that knows it is loved but


does not itself love exposes its sediment: - its bottom-most aspect rises to the top. An issue that has been resolved stops mattering to us. - What did that god whocounseled'Knowyourself!'reallymean?Wasitperhaps:'Stop letting anything matter to you! Become objective!' - And Socrates? - And the 'scientific man'? - It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. So do you have to salt your truth to the point where it doesn't quench thirst anymore? , Beyond Good and Evil = Asoul that knows it is loved but does not itself love exposes its sediment: - its bottom-most aspect rises to the top. An issue that has been resolved stops mattering to us. - What did that god whocounseled'Knowyourself!'reallymean?Wasitperhaps:'Stop letting anything matter to you! Become objective!' - And Socrates? - And the 'scientific man'? - It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. So do you have to salt your truth to the point where it doesn't quench thirst anymore? . Asoul that knows it is loved but does not itself love exposes its sediment: - its bottom-most aspect rises to the top. An issue that has been resolved stops mattering to us. - What did that god whocounseled'Knowyourself!'reallymean?Wasitperhaps:'Stop letting anything matter to you! Become objective!' - And Socrates? - And the 'scientific man'? - It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. So do you have to salt your truth to the point where it doesn't quench thirst anymore? , Beyond Good and Evil = Asoul that knows it is loved but does not itself love exposes its sediment: - its bottom-most aspect rises to the top. An issue that has been resolved stops mattering to us. - What did that god whocounseled'Knowyourself!'reallymean?Wasitperhaps:'Stop letting anything matter to you! Become objective!' - And Socrates? - And the 'scientific man'? - It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. So do you have to salt your truth to the point where it doesn't quench


thirst anymore? . Anyone who despises himself will still respect himself as a despiser., Beyond Good and Evil = . Anyone who despises himself will still respect himself as a despiser., Beyond Good and Evil = . Anyone who despises himself will still respect himself as a despiser., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = People use their principles to try to tyrannize or justify or honor or insult or conceal their habits: - two people with the same principles will probably. , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = 'Pity for all' - would be harshness and tyranny for you ,. , Beyond Good and Evil = my dear


Instinct . - When your house is on fire, you even forget about lunch. - Yes, but you pick it out from the ashes. Women learn how to hate in the same proportion that they unlearn how to charm. The same affects have different tempos in men and in women: that is why men and women do not stop misunderstanding each other.


Behind all their personal vanity, women always have an impersonal contempt - for 'woman.' Boundheart, free spirit . - If someone binds up his heart and takes it captive, he can give his spirit considerable freedom: I have said this once already. But nobody will believe me if they do not already know ... You start to mistrust very clever people when they get embarrassed. Terrible experiences make you wonder if the people who have experienced them are not terrible themselves. Love and hate, the very things that weigh other people down, will make heavy, heavy-hearted people lighter and momentarily superficial.


Weall pretend to ourselves that we are more naive than we are: this is how, Epigrams and entr'actes = Weall pretend to ourselves that we are more naive than we are: this is how. we relax from other people. , Epigrams and entr'actes = we relax from other people. . animal., Epigrams and entr'actes = Today, someone with knowledge might well feel like God becoming. , Epigrams and entr'actes = . to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or - or - ', Epigrams and entr'actes = When somebody discovers their love is requited, it really should temper their feelings for their beloved. 'What? This person is unassuming enough. , Epigrams and entr'actes = . Danger in happiness. - 'Now everything is at its best, now I love every fate: - who wants to be my fate?', Epigrams and entr'actes = Danger in happiness. - 'Now everything is at its best, now I love every fate: - who wants to be my fate?'. It is not their love for humanity but rather the impotence of their love for, Epigrams and entr'actes = It is not their love for humanity but rather the impotence of their love for. humanity that keeps today's Christian from - burning us., Epigrams and entr'actes = humanity that keeps today's Christian from - burning us.. , Epigrams and entr'actes = . For free spirits, for the 'pious men of knowledge' - the pia fraus offends taste (offends their 'piety') more than the impia fraus . This explains their profound failure to understand the church, which is typical of 'free spirits' - as their un-freedom., Epigrams and entr'actes = For free spirits, for the 'pious men of knowledge' - the pia fraus offends taste (offends their 'piety') more than the impia fraus . This explains their profound failure to understand the church, which is typical of 'free spirits' - as their un-freedom.. , Epigrams and entr'actes = . Music allows the passions to enjoy themselves.,


Epigrams and entr'actes = Pious fraud. Impious fraud. Wheneveryoureachadecision,close your ears to even the best objections: this is the sign of a strong character. Which means: an occasional will to stupidity., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . There are absolutely no moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation of the phenomena ..., Beyond Good and Evil = . Often enough the criminal is no match for his deed: he cheapens and slanders it., Beyond Good and Evil = . Defenders of criminals are rarely artistic enough to use the beautiful, Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . Our vanity is at its strongest precisely when our pride has been wounded., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = Where neither love nor hate are in play, woman is a mediocre player., Epigrams and entr'actes = Where neither love nor hate are in play, woman is a mediocre player.. , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . Thewill to overcome an affect is, in the end, itself only the will of another, or several other, affects., Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . realize that they themselves might also be admired some day., Epigrams and entr'actes = . Disgust at filth can be so great that it prevents us from cleaning ourselves - from 'justifying' ourselves., Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . Sensuality often hurries the growth of love so that the root stays weak and is easy to tear up., Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes =


, Beyond Good and Evil = . Even concubinage gets corrupted: - by marriage., Beyond Good and Evil = . If someone rejoices while burning at the stake it is not because he has triumphed over his pain, but rather over not feeling any pain when he, Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . Whenweareforcedtochangeourmindaboutsomebody,wecountagainst, Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . Apeople is nature's roundabout way of getting six or seven great men. - Yes: and then of getting around them., Beyond Good and Evil = . All proper women find something shameful about science. They think it is too forward, as if it would let people peek under their skin - or worse!, Beyond Good and Evil = . The more abstract the truth you want to teach, the more you have to, Beyond Good and Evil = . The devil has the broadest perspective on God, which is why he keeps, Beyond Good and Evil = Epigrams and entr'actes


What someone is begins to reveal itself when his talent diminishes - when he stops showing what he can do. So talent is also a piece of finery; and finery is also a hiding place.


The sexes deceive themselves about each other: which means they basically only love and honor themselves (or their own ideal, to say it more nicely - ). So men would have it that women are placid - but women above all are essentially not placid, just like cats, however much they have rehearsed the appearance of placidity. We are best punished for our virtues. Someone who does not know how to find the path to his ideal lives more carelessly and impudently than someone without an ideal.


All credibility, good conscience, and evidence of truth first come from the senses.


Pharisaism is not a degeneration in good people: rather, a good part of it is the condition of any being good.


Thefirst one looks for a midwife for his thoughts - the other, for someone he can help: this is how a good conversation begins.


In dealing with scholars and artists, people are easily led in the wrong direction: behind a remarkable scholar you will not infrequently find a mediocre person, and behind a mediocre artist quite often - someone really remarkable.


When we are awake we do the same thing as when we are dreaming: we first invent and create the people we are dealing with - and then forget it immediately.


In revenge and in love, woman is more barbaric than man.


Advice as riddle . ' - If the bond does not split, - then it first must be bit.'


The abdomen is the reason why people are not so quick to consider themselves gods.


The chastest saying I ever have heard: ' Dans le v'eritable amour c'est l'ame qui enveloppe le corps .'


Our vanity would have it that the things we do best are the very things that are most difficult for us. On the origin of many morals. 'In true love, it is the soul that envelops the body.' Epigrams and entr'actes


When a woman has scholarly inclinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexuality. Even sterility makes her prone to a certain masculinity of taste; man is, if you will, 'the sterile animal.'


Comparing man and woman overall, you could say: woman would not have a genius for finery if she did not have an instinct for the secondary role.


Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become one himself. And when you stare for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.


From old Florentine novellas: but also - from life: buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone . Sacchetti, Nov. .


To seduce those nearest to you into a good opinion, and then credit the credibility of this opinion: who can equal women in this piece of art? -


What an age perceives as evil is usually an untimely after-effect of something that used to be perceived as good - the atavism of an older ideal. 'Both good and bad women need the stick.' From Franco Sacchetti, Novelle (written in the late fourteenth century, but published in ). Around the hero everything turns into tragedy; around the demigod everything turns into a satyr play; and around God everything turns into - what? Perhaps 'world'? -, Beyond Good and Evil = . it, - right? my friends?, Beyond Good and Evil = . Whatever is done out of love takes place beyond good and evil., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . Objections, minor infidelities, cheerful mistrust, a delight in mockery - these are symptoms of health. Everything unconditional belongs to pathology., Beyond Good and Evil = . A sense for the tragic grows and declines along with sensuousness., Beyond Good and Evil = . Madness is rare in the individual - but with groups, parties, peoples, and ages it is the rule., Beyond Good and Evil = . The thought of suicide is a strong means of comfort: it helps get us, Beyond Good and Evil =


Our strongest drives, the tyrants in us, subjugate not only our reason but our conscience as well., Epigrams and entr'actes = Our strongest drives, the tyrants in us, subjugate not only our reason but our conscience as well.. Our strongest drives, the tyrants in us, subjugate not only our reason but our conscience as well., Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . We have to, Epigrams and entr'actes = repay good and bad: but why do we have to repay precisely those people who did us the good or bad?. We have to, Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . You do not love your knowledge enough anymore, as soon as you com-, Epigrams and entr'actes = . You do not love your knowledge enough anymore, as soon as you com-, Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them., Epigrams and entr'actes = . Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them., Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . next door to them, Epigrams and entr'actes = ' - this is what all peoples believe. Lovebrings to light the high and the hidden qualities of the lover - what is. next door to them, Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . Jesus said to his Jews: 'The law was for servants, - love God as I do, as his son! Why should we care about morals, we sons of God?' -, Epigrams and entr'actes = rare and exceptional about him: to this extent, love easily misleads


about his ordinary traits.. Jesus said to his Jews: 'The law was for servants, - love God as I do, as his son! Why should we care about morals, we sons of God?' -, Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . , Epigrams and entr'actes = . This means 'neighbor' in the Biblical sense, which Nietzsche is (the ones next door), a more general term for 'neighbor.'


Regarding all parties sometimes he has to be the wether himself., Beyond Good and Evil = . - A shepherd always needs another bellwether, - or. Regarding all parties sometimes he has to be the wether himself., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = Lies come through our mouths - but the face that accompanies them tells. , Beyond Good and Evil = . Withhardpeople,intimacyis a source of shame - and something precious. , Beyond Good and Evil = Withhardpeople,intimacyis a source of shame - and something precious. . Withhardpeople,intimacyis a source of shame - and something precious. , Beyond Good and Evil = Withhardpeople,intimacyis a source of shame - and something precious. . the truth., Beyond Good and Evil = . the truth., Beyond Good and Evil = . Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: - he did not die from it, but degenerated into a vice., Beyond Good and Evil = . Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: - he did not die from it, but degenerated into a vice., Beyond Good and Evil = . Talking frequently about yourself can also be a way of hiding. There is more intrusiveness in praise than in censure. Pity is almost laughable in a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops. , Beyond Good and Evil = Talking frequently about yourself can also be a way of hiding. There is more intrusiveness in praise than in censure. Pity is almost laughable in a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops. . Talking frequently about yourself can also be a way of hiding. There is more intrusiveness in praise than in censure. Pity is almost laughable in a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops. , Beyond Good and Evil = Talking frequently about yourself can also be a way of hiding. There is more intrusiveness in praise than in censure. Pity is almost laughable in a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a Cyclops. . some arbitrary person (because we cannot embrace everyone): but that is precisely what we cannot let the arbitrary person know ..., Beyond Good and Evil = . some arbitrary person (because we cannot embrace everyone): but that is precisely what we cannot let the arbitrary person know


..., Beyond Good and Evil = . , Beyond Good and Evil = Every once in a while, a love of humanity will inspire us to embrace. , Beyond Good and Evil =


It is inhuman to bless where you are cursed.


The confidences of our superiors enrage us because they cannot be reciprocated. -


'I'm not upset because you lied to me, I'm upset because I don't believe you any more.' -


Goodness has a high-spiritedness that looks like malice.


'I dislike him.' - Why? - 'I'm no match for him.' - Has anyone ever given this sort of an answer?


In Europe these days, moral sentiment is just as refined, late, multiple, sensitive, and subtle as the 'science of morals' (which belongs with it) is young, neophyte, clumsy, and crude: - an attractive contrast, and one that occasionally becomes visible, embodied in the person of the moralist himself. Considering what it signifies, the very phrase 'science of morals' is much too arrogant and offends good taste, which always tends to prefer more modest terms. We should admit to ourselves with all due severity exactly what will be necessary for a long time to come and what is provisionally correct, namely: collecting material, formulating concepts, and putting into order the tremendous realm of tender value feelings and value distinctions that live, grow, reproduce, and are destroyed, - and, perhaps, attempting to illustrate the recurring and more frequent shapes of this living crystallization, - all of which would be a preparation for a typology of morals. Of course, people have not generally been this modest. Philosophers have all demanded (with ridiculously stubborn seriousness) something much more exalted, ambitious, and solemn as soon as they took up morality as a science: they wanted morality to be grounded ,-and every philosopher so far has thought that he has provided a ground for morality. Morality itself, however, was thought to be 'given.' What a distance between this sort of crass pride and that supposedly modest little descriptive project, left in rot and ruin, even though the subtlest hands and senses could hardly be subtle enough for it. Precisely because moral philosophers had only a crude knowledge of moral facta , selected arbitrarily and abbreviated at random - for instance, as the morality of Beyond Good and Evil


their surroundings, their class, their church, their Zeitgeist , their climate and region, - precisely because they were poorly informed (and not particularly eager to learn more) about peoples, ages, and histories, they completely missed out on the genuine problems involved in morality, problems that only emerge from a comparison of many different moralities. As strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been missing from every 'science of morals' so far: there was no suspicion that anything was really a problem. Viewed properly, the 'grounding of morals' (as philosophers called it, as they demanded it of themselves) was only an erudite form of good faith in the dominant morality, a new way of expressing it; as such, it was itself already situated within the terms of a certain morality. In the last analysis, it even constitutes a type of denial that these morals can be regarded as a problem. But, in any event, it is the opposite of an examination, dissection, interrogation, vivisection of precisely this article of faith. For example, let us listen to the almost admirable innocence with which even Schopenhauer describes his own project, and then we can draw our conclusions as to how scientific a 'science' could be when its ultimate masters are still talking like children or old women. 'The principle,' he says (p. of the Grundprobleme der Moral ), 'the fundamental claim, on whose content all ethicists actually agree: neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva - this is actually the claim that all moralists attempt to ground ... the actual foundation of ethics that people have sought for millennia, just as they have looked for the philosophers' stone.' - The difficulty involved in grounding the claim just cited might be great indeed - Schopenhauer himself came up famously short in this regard. And anyone who has ever truly felt how inanely false and sentimental this claim is in a world whose essence is will to power -, they might recall that Schopenhauer, pessimism notwithstanding, actually - played the flute ... every day, after dinner. You can read it in his biography. And just out of curiosity: a pessimist who negates both God and world but stops before morality, - who affirms morality and plays his flute, affirms laede neminem morality: excuse me? is this really - a


pessimist? Spirit of the age. 'Harm no one, but rather help everyone as much as you can.' Schopenhauer's 'Preisschrift uber die Grundlage der Moral' (Prize Essay on the Basis of Morals), part two of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik ( The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics )( ). The emphases are Nietzsche's. On the natural history of morals


Apart from the value of claims like 'there is a categorical imperative in us,' the question remains: what do claims like this tell us about the people who make them? There are moralities that are supposed to justify their creator in the eyes of others, and other moralities that are supposed to calm him down and allow him to be content with himself; still other moralities allow him to crucify and humiliate himself. He can use some moralities to take revenge, others to hide, and still others to transfigure himself and place himself far and away. There are moralities that help their creator to forget, and others that let him - or something about him - be forgotten. Manymoralistswouldliketowieldpowerandimposetheircreativewhims on humanity; many others (perhaps even Kant himself) want to make it clear through their morality that 'the worthy thing about me is that I can obey - and it should be the same for you as it is for me!' - in short, even morality is just a sign language of the affects !


Every morality, as opposed to laisser-aller , is a piece of tyranny against both 'nature' and 'reason.' But this in itself is no objection; for that, we would have to issue yet another decree based on some other morality forbidding every sort of tyranny and unreason. What is essential and invaluable about every morality is that it is a long compulsion. In order to understand Stoicism or Port-Royal or Puritanism, just remember the compulsion under which every language so far has developed strength and freedom: the compulsion of meter, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. Look at how much trouble the poets and the orators of every country have to go through! (including some of today's prose writers, who have an inexorable conscience in their ear) - and all 'for the sake of some stupidity,' as utilitarian fools say (and think they are clever for saying it) - or 'in obsequious submission to arbitrary laws,' as anarchists say (and then imagine themselves 'free,' even free-spirited). But the strange fact is that everything there is, or was, of freedom, subtlety, boldness, dance, or masterly assurance on earth, whether in thinking itself, or in ruling, or in speaking and persuading, in artistic just as in ethical practices, has only developed by virtue of the 'tyranny of such arbitrary laws.' And, in all Letting go. Beyond Good and Evil


seriousness, it is not at all improbable that this is what is 'nature' and 'natural' - and not that laisser-aller ! Every artist knows how far removed this feeling of letting go is from his 'most natural' state, the free ordering, placing, disposing and shaping in the moment of 'inspiration' - he knows how strictly and subtly he obeys thousands of laws at this very moment, laws that defy conceptual formulation precisely because of their hardness and determinateness (compared with these laws, there is something floundering, multiple, and ambiguous about even the most solid concept -). I will say it again: what seems to be essential 'in heaven and on earth' is that there be obedience in one direction for a long time. In the long term, this always brings and has brought about something that makes life on earth worth living - for instance: virtue, art, music, dance, reason, intellect - something that transfigures, something refined, fantastic, and divine. The long un-freedom of spirit, the mistrustful constraint in the communicability of thought, the discipline that thinkers imposed on themselves, thinking within certain guidelines imposed by the church or court or Aristotelian presuppositions, the long, spiritual will to interpret every event according to a Christian scheme and to rediscover and justify the Christian God in every chance event, - all this violence, arbitrariness, harshness, terror, and anti-reason has shown itself to be the means through which strength, reckless curiosity, and subtle agility have been bred into the European spirit. Admittedly, this also entailed an irreplaceable loss of force and spirit, which have had to be crushed, stifled, and ruined (since here, just like everywhere else, 'nature,' shows itself in its utterly wasteful and indifferent glory, which is outrageous but noble). The fact that, for thousands of years, European thinkers have been thinking only in order to prove something (these days it is the other way around: we are suspicious of any thinker who 'has something to prove') - the fact that the results which were supposed to emerge from their most intense contemplations were in fact already firmly established (somewhat like earlier Asian astrology or even the present-day innocuous Christian-moral interpretation of the most personal events 'to the glory of god' and 'to save the soul'):


- this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this stern and grandiose stupidity has trained the spirit. Slavery, in both the crude and refined senses of the term, seems to be the indispensable means of disciplining and breeding even the spirit. We can look at every morality in the following way: whatever 'nature' it contains teaches us to hate the laisser-aller , the all-too-great freedom, and plants in us the need for


limited horizons and the closest tasks. It teaches a narrowing of perspective and so, in a certain sense, stupidity as a condition for life and growth. 'You should obey someone, anyone, and for a long time: or else you will deteriorate and lose all respect for yourself ' - this seems to me to be the moral imperative of nature, which is clearly neither 'categorical,' as the old Kant demanded it to be (hence the 'or else' -), nor directed to the individual (what does nature care about the individual!), but rather to peoples, races, ages, classes, and above all to the whole 'human' animal, to the human.


Theindustrious races find it extremely difficult to tolerate idleness: it was a stroke of genius on the part of the English instinct to spend Sundays in tedium with a te deum so that the English people would unconsciously lust for their week- and workdays. It is the same type of cleverly invented, cleverly interpolated period of fasting that you find all over the ancient world (although there, as is often the case with southern peoples, it is not exactly associated with work -). There need to be many types of fasts; and wherever powerful drives and habits rule, the law-makers have to be sure to put in leap days when these drives are chained up and made to relearn what hunger feels like. Entire generations or epochs, emerging in the grips of some moral fanaticism or another, seem (from a higher viewpoint) to be just such interposed periods of compulsion and fasting, the times when a drive learns to cower and submit, but also to keep itself clean and sharp . Some philosophical sects can be interpreted in this way as well (like the Stoa in the midst of a Hellenistic culture whose air had become heavy and lascivious with the fragrance of aphrodisiacs). - This also suggests an explanation for the paradox of why it was precisely during Europe's Christian period and only under the pressure of Christian value judgments that the sex drive sublimated itself into love ( amour-passion ).


ThereissomethinginPlato's moral philosophy that does not really belong to him, but is there in spite of him, as it were: namely, the Socratism that Love as passion.


he was really too noble for. 'Nobody wants to harm himself, and therefore everything bad happens involuntarily. The bad man brings harm to himself, and he would not do so if he knew badness was bad. Accordingly, people are bad only through error; if the error is removed, they will necessarily become - good.' - This type of inference stinks of the rabble , who see only the disagreeable effects of bad actions and are in fact judging: 'it is stupid to act badly,' while assuming that 'good' is identical with 'useful and pleasant.' If you start off with the assumption that this is the origin of every utilitarian morality and then follow your nose, you will rarely go wrong. - Plato did everything he could to interpret something refined and noble into his teacher's claim: above all, himself -, him, the most daring of all interpreters, who treated the whole of Socrates just like someone might treat a popular theme or folksong from the streets, varying it to the point of infinity and impossibility, into all his own masks and multitudes. As a joke (and a Homeric one at that), what is the Platonic Socrates if not: /rho1 ' o /Pi1 ' ' ' o ' /Pi1 ' ' X ' /rho1 .


The old theological problem of 'faith' and 'knowledge' - or, to be more precise, of instinct and reason - and so, the question of whether, with respect to the value of things, the instincts deserve more authority than reason (reason wants some ground or 'what for?', some purpose or utility behind our values and actions) - this is the same old moral problem that first emerged in the person of Socrates and divided opinions long before Christianity came along. Socrates of course had initially sided with reason, given the taste of his talent - that of a superior dialectician. And, in point of fact, didn't he spend his whole life laughing at the shortcomings of his clumsy, noble Athenians, who, like all noble people, were men of instinct and could never really account for why they acted the way they did? But in the end, silently and secretly, he laughed at himself as well; with his acute conscience and self-scrutiny, he discovered the same difficulty and shortcoming in himself. 'Why free ourselves from the instincts?' he asked himself; 'We should give them their fair dues, 'Plato at the front, Plato at the back, Chimaera in the middle.'


along with reason - we have to follow our instincts but persuade reason to come to their aid with good motives.' This was the genuine falseness of that great, secretive ironist; he made his conscience seem satisfied with a type of self-deceit. Basically, he had seen through to the irrationality of moral judgments. - Plato, who was more innocent in such matters and lacked Socrates' plebeian craftiness, wanted to use all his strength (the greatest strength a philosopher had ever had at his disposal!) to prove to himself that reason and the instincts converge independently on a single goal, on the Good, or 'God'; and, ever since Plato, all theologians and philosophers have been on the same track. Which is to say: in matters of morality, it has been instinct, or (as the Christians say) 'faith,' or (as I say) 'the herd' that has had the upper hand so far. Descartes was an exception, as the father of rationalism (and consequently grandfather of the Revolution) who granted authority to reason alone. But reason is only a tool and Descartes was superficial.


Anyone who investigates the history of a particular science will find in its development a clue to understanding the oldest and most secret processes of all 'knowledge and cognition': there as here, rash hypotheses, fictions, the dumb good will to 'believe,' and a lack of mistrust and patience develop first - our senses learn late and never fully learn to be refined, trusty, careful organs of knowledge. Given some stimulus, our eyes find it more convenient to reproduce an image that they have often produced before than to register what is different and new about an impression: the latter requires more strength, more 'morality.' It is awkward and difficult for the ear to hear something new; we are bad at listening to unfamiliar music. When we hear another language, we involuntarily try to form the sounds we hear into words that sound more comfortable and familiar to us: so, for instance, German people at one point heard ' arcubalista 'andmadeitintotheword' Armbrust .' Evenoursensesgreet everything novel with reluctance and hostility; and affects like fear, love, and hate, as well as passive affects of laziness, will be dominant during even the 'simplest' processes of sensibility. - Just as little as today's Both words mean 'crossbow.' The German term Armbrust literally means 'arm-breast' and so mimics the sound but not the sense of the Latin. Beyond Good and Evil


reader takes in all the individual words (or especially syllables) on a page (he catches maybe five out of twenty words and 'guesses' what these five arbitrary words might possibly mean) - just as little do we see a tree precisely and completely, with respect to leaves, branches, colors, and shape. We find it so much easier to imagine an approximate tree instead. Even in the middle of the strangest experiences we do the same thing: we invent most of the experience and can barely be made not to regard ourselves as the 'inventor' of some process. - What all this amounts to is: we are, from the bottom up and across the ages, used to lying .Or,to put the point more virtuously, more hypocritically and, in short, more pleasantly: people are much more artistic than they think. - In the middle of a lively conversation I will often see the other person's face expressing his thoughts (or the thoughts I attribute to him) with a degree of clarity and detail that far exceeds the power of my visual ability: - such subtlety of muscle movement and ocular expression must have come from my own imagination. In all likelihood the person had an entirely different expression, or none at all.


Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit : but vice versa too. What we experience in dreams, as long as we experience it often enough, ends up belonging to the total economy of our soul just as much as anything we have 'really' experienced. Such experiences make us richer or poorer, we have one need more or less, and finally, in the bright light of day and even in the clearest moments when minds are wide awake, we are coddled a little by the habits of our dreams. Suppose someone frequently dreams that he is flying, and as soon as he starts dreaming he becomes aware of the art and ability of flight as his privilege as well as his most particular, most enviable happiness - someone like this, who thinks he can negotiate every type of curve and corner with the slightest impulse, who knows the feeling of an assured, divine ease, an 'upwards' without tension or force, a 'downwards' without condescension or abasement - without heaviness !-how could someone with dream experiences and dream habits like these not see that the word 'happiness' is colored and determined differently in his waking day too! how could his demands for happiness not be different ? 'What happened in the light goes on in the dark.' On the natural history of morals Compared to this 'flying,' the 'soaring upwards' that the poets describe will have to be too terrestrial, muscular, violent, even too 'heavy' for him.


Human diversity is apparent not only in the variety of people's tables of goods - which is to say the fact that they consider different goods worthwhile and that they disagree with each other as to the more or less of values, the rank order of commonly acknowledged goods: - diversity is much more evident in what they think counts as actually owning and possessing a good. When it comes to a woman, for instance, a more modest person might consider disposal over her body and sexual usage as sufficient and satisfactory signs of possession, of ownership. Someone else with a more suspicious and demanding thirst for possession will see the 'question-mark' here, the fact that this is only the appearance of possession; such a person will want to examine more closely in order to be particularly clear as to whether the woman will give not only herself to him, but also give up what she has or wants for the sake of him -: only this will count as 'possession' for him. But even this would not satisfy the mistrust and possessive desires of a third person, who asks himself whether the woman who gives up everything for his sake is not doing this for some sort of a fantasized version of him. He wants to be thoroughly (even meticulously) well known before he is able to be loved at all; he does not dare to let anyone figure him out -. He will not feel that he possesses his beloved fully until she harbors no illusions about him, until she loves him just as much for his devilishness and hidden inexhaustibility as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. Someone might want to possess a people, and he finds all the higher arts of the Cagliostro and Catilina suited to this goal. Someone else with a more subtle thirst for possession will say to himself 'one should not deceive where one wants to possess' -. He becomes irritated and impatient at the thought that a mask of himself rules the hearts of the people: 'which is why I have to let myself be known, and above all know myself!' Among helpful and charitable people you typically discover that clumsy piece of deceit that makes somebody ready before helping him: for instance, acting as if he 'deserves' help, requires precisely their help, and will prove to be deeply grateful, devoted, and obsequious for any help they give him, - with


these fantasies they treat the needy like their own property, since they are helpful and charitable out of a desire for property. You will find them jealous if you cross them while they are being charitable, or beat them to it. Parents involuntarily make children into something similar to themselves and call it 'bringing them up.' No mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that, in the child, she has given birth to a piece of property; no father questions his right to subject the child to his own ideas and valuations. In fact, there was a time (among the ancient Germans, for instance) when it seemed fair that the father should dispose of the life and death of the newborn as he saw fit. And now it is the teacher, the social class, the priest, and the prince who, like the father, see every new person as an incontrovertible opportunity for a new possession. And it follows from this ...


The Jews - a people 'born for slavery' as Tacitus and the entire ancient world say, 'the people chosen of all peoples' as they themselves say and think - the Jews have achieved that miraculous thing, an inversion of values, thanks to which life on earth has had a new and dangerous charm for several millennia: - their prophets melted together 'rich,' 'godless,' 'evil,' 'violent,' 'sensual' and for the first time coined an insult out of the word 'world.' The significance of the Jewish people lies in this inversion of values (which includes using the word for 'poor' as a synonym for 'holy' and 'friend'): the slave revolt in morality begins with the Jews.


We infer the existence of innumerable dark bodies lying close to the sun, ones that we will never see. Between you and me, this is a parable; and a psychologist of morals will read the entire book of the stars only as a language of signs and parables in which much is left silent.


You utterly fail to understand beasts of prey and men of prey (like Cesare Borgia), you fail to understand 'nature' if you are still looking for a Tacitus, Historiae ,V, . On the natural history of morals 'disease' at the heart of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths,orparticularly if you are looking for some innate 'hell' in them -: as almost all moralists so far have done. Does it seem that moralists harbor a hatred against tropics and primeval forests? And that they need to discredit the 'tropical man' at all cost, whether as a disease or degeneration of man, or as his own hell and self-martyrdom? But why? In favor of 'temperate zones?' In favor of temperate men? Of 'moralists'? Of the mediocre? - This for the chapter: 'Morality as Timidity.' -


All these morals directed at the individual person to promote what people call his 'happiness' - are they anything other than recommendations for constraint, in proportion to the degree of danger in which the individual person lives his life? or cures for his passions, his good and bad tendencies to the extent that they have will to power and want to play master? or large or small acts of cleverness and artifice, tainted with the stale smell of old folk-remedies and old wives' wisdom? They are all baroque in form and unreasonable (because they are directed at 'everyone,' because they generalize what should not be generalized); they all speak unconditionally, consider themselves unconditional; they are all seasoned with more than just one grain of salt - in fact, they only become tolerable, and occasionally even seductive, when they learn to smell over-spiced, dangerous, and, above all, 'other-worldly.' - On an intellectual scale, all this is of little value and not even remotely 'scientific' let alone 'wise'; instead, to say it again (and again and again), it is clever, clever, clever mixed with stupid, stupid, stupid, - whether we are talking about that indifference and stone column coldness which the Stoics prescribed and applied as a cure for the feverish idiocy of the affects; or that no-more-laughter, no-more-tears of Spinoza, who so naively champions the destruction of the affects through analysis and vivisection; or that method of tuning down the affects to a harmless mean where they might be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of affects, intentionally watered down and spiritualized through the symbolism of art, like music, for instance, or the love of God and the love of men for the sake of God - since in religion the passions regain their civil rights, provided that ... ; and finally, even that easy and high-spirited surrender to the affects taught by Hafiz and Beyond Good and Evil Goethe, that bold slackening of the reins, that spiritual-physical licentia morum in the special cases of smart old eccentrics and drunks, where there 'isn't much danger anymore.' This also for the chapter: 'Morality as Timidity.'


For as long as there have been people, there have been herds of people as well (racial groups, communities, tribes, folk, states, churches), and a very large number of people who obey compared to relatively few who command. So, considering the fact that humanity has been the best and most long-standing breeding ground for the cultivation of obedience so far, it is reasonable to suppose that the average person has an innate need to obey as a type of formal conscience that commands: 'Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally not do something,' in short: 'Thou shalt.' This need tries to satisfy itself and give its form a content, so, like a crude appetite, it indiscriminately grabs hold and accepts whatever gets screamed into its ear by some commander or another - a parent, teacher, the law, class prejudice, public opinion - according to its strength, impatience, and tension. The oddly limited character of human development - its hesitancy and lengthiness, its frequent regressions and reversals - is due to the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is inherited the best and at the cost of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct ever advancing to its furthest excesses, in the end there will be nobody with independence or the ability to command; or, such people will suffer inwardly from bad consciences and need to fool themselves into thinking that they too are only obeying before they are able to command. This is in fact the situation in Europe today; I call it the moral hypocrisy of the commanders. They do not know how to protect themselves from their bad consciences except by acting like executors of older or higher commands (from their ancestors, constitution, justice system, laws, or God himself) or even by borrowing herd maxims from the herd mentality, such as the 'first servants of the people,' or the 'instruments of the commonweal.' For his part, the herd man of today's Europe gives himself the appearance of being the only permissible type of man and glorifies those Moral license. On the natural history of morals


characteristics that make him tame, easy-going and useful to the herd as the true human virtues, namely: public spirit, goodwill, consideration, industry, moderation, modesty, clemency, and pity. But in those cases where people think they cannot do without a leader and bellwether, they keep trying to replace the commander with an agglomeration of clever herd men: this is the origin of all representative constitutions, for example. What a relief it is for these European herd animals, what a deliverance from an increasingly intolerable pressure, when, in spite of everything, someone appears who can issue unconditional commands; the impact of Napoleon's appearance is the last major piece of evidence for this: - the history of Napoleon's impact is practically the history of the higher happiness attained by this whole century in its most worthwhile people and moments.


In an age of disintegration where the races are mixed together, a person will have the legacy of multiple lineages in his body, which means conflicting (and often not merely conflicting) drives and value standards that fight with each other and rarely leave each other alone. A man like this, of late cultures and refracted lights, will typically be a weaker person: his most basic desire is for an end to the war that he is . His notion of happiness corresponds to that of a medicine and mentality of pacification (for instance the Epicurean or Christian); it is a notion of happiness as primarily rest, lack of disturbance, repletion, unity at last and the 'Sabbath of Sabbaths,' to speak with the holy rhetorician Augustine, who was himself this sort of person. - But if conflict and war affect such a nature as one more stimulus and goad to life -, and if genuine proficiency and finesse in waging war with himself (which is to say: the ability to control and outwit himself) are inherited and cultivated along with his most powerful and irreconcilable drives, then what emerge are those amazing, incomprehensible, and unthinkable ones, those human riddles destined for victory and for seduction; Alcibiades and Caesar are the most exquisite expressions of this type (- and I will gladly set by their side that first European after my taste, the Hohenstaufen Frederick II), and among artists perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear in exactly those ages when that weaker type, with his longing for peace, comes to the fore. These types belong together and derive from the same set of causes.


Aslongasherdutility is the only utility governing moral value judgments, as long as the preservation of the community is the only thing in view and questions concerning immorality are limited to those things that seem to threaten the survival of the community; as long as this is the case, there cannot yet be a 'morality of neighbor love.' Suppose that even here, consideration, pity, propriety, gentleness, and reciprocity of aid are already practiced in a small but steady way; suppose that even in this state of society, all the drives that would later come to be called by the honorable name of 'virtues' (and, in the end, basically coincide with the concept of 'morality') - suppose that they are already active: at this point they still do not belong to the realm of moral valuations at all - they are still extra-moral . During the best days of Rome, for instance, an act done out of pity was not called either good or evil, moral or immoral; and if it were praised on its own, the praise would be perfectly compatible with a type of reluctant disdain as soon as it was held up against any action that served to promote the common good, the res publica . Ultimately, the 'love of the neighbor' is always somewhat conventional, willfully feigned andbeside the point compared to fear of the neighbor . After the structure of society seems on the whole to be established and secured against external dangers,it is this fear of the neighbor that again creates new perspectives of moral valuation. Until now, in the spirit of common utility, certain strong and dangerous drives such as enterprise, daring, vindictiveness, cunning, rapacity, and a domineering spirit must have been not only honored (under different names than these of course), but nurtured and cultivated (since, given the threats to the group, they were constantly needed against the common enemies). Now, however, since there are no more escape valves for these drives, they are seen as twice as dangerous and, one by one, they are denounced as immoral and abandoned to slander. Now the opposite drives and inclinations come into moral favor; step by step, the herd instinct draws its conclusion. How much or how little danger there is to the community or to equality in an opinion, in a condition or affect, in a will, in a talent, this is now the moral perspective: and fear is once again the mother of morality. When the highest and strongest


drives erupt in passion, driving the individual up and out and far above the average, over the depths of the herd conscience, the self-esteem of the community is Commonwealth. On the natural history of morals destroyed - its faith in itself, its backbone, as it were, is broken: as a result, these are the very drives that will be denounced and slandered the most. A high, independent spiritedness, a will to stand alone, even an excellent faculty of reason, will be perceived as a threat. Everything that raises the individual over the herd and frightens the neighbor will henceforth be called evil ; the proper, modest, unobtrusive, equalizing attitude and the mediocrity of desires acquire moral names and honors. Finally, in very peaceable circumstances there are fewer and fewer opportunities and less and less need to nurture an instinct for severity or hardness; and now every severity starts disturbing the conscience, even where justice is concerned. A high and hard nobility and self-reliance is almost offensive, and provokes suspicion; 'the lamb,' and 'the sheep' even more, gains respect. - There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes pathologically enervated and tenderized and it takes sides, quite honestly andearnestly, with those who do it harm, with criminals . Punishment: that seems somehow unjust to this society, - it certainly finds the thoughts of 'punishment' and 'needing to punish' both painful and frightening. 'Isn't it enough to render him unthreatening ? Why punish him as well? Punishment is itself fearful!' - with these questions, the herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its final consequences. If the threat, the reason for the fear, could be totally abolished, this morality would be abolished as well: it would not be necessary any more, it would not consider itself necessary any more! Anyone who probes the conscience of today's European will have to extract the very same imperative from a thousand moral folds and hiding places, the imperative of herd timidity: 'we want the day to come when there is nothing more to fear !' The day to come - the will and way to that day is now called 'progress' everywhere in Europe.


Let us immediately repeat what we have already said a hundred times before, since there are no ready ears for such truths - for our truths these days. We know all too well how offensive it sounds when someone classifies human beings as animals, without disguises or allegory; and we are considered almost sinful for constantly using expressions like 'herd,' and 'herd instinct' with direct reference to people of 'modern ideas.' So what? We cannot help ourselves, since this is where our new insights happen to lie. Europe, we have found, has become unanimous in all major Beyond Good and Evil


moral judgments; and this includes the countries under Europe's influence. People in Europe clearly know what Socrates claimed not to know, and what that famous old snake once promised to teach, - people these days 'know' what is good and evil. Now it must sound harsh and strike the ear quite badly when we keep insisting on the following point: what it is that claims to know here, what glorifies itself with its praise and reproach and calls itself good is the instinct of the herd animal man, which has come to the fore, gaining and continuing to gain predominance and supremacy over the other instincts, in accordance with the growing physiological approach and approximation whose symptom it is. Morality in Europe these days is the morality of herd animals : - and therefore, as we understand things, it is only one type of human morality beside which, before which, and after which many other (and especially higher ) moralities are or should be possible. But this morality fights tooth and nail against such a 'possibility' and such a 'should': it stubbornly and ruthlessly declares 'I am morality itself and nothing else is moral!' And in fact, with the aid of a religion that indulged and flattered the loftiest herd desires, things have reached the point where this morality is increasingly apparent in even political and social institutions: the democratic movement is the heir to Christianity. But there are indications that the tempo of this morality is still much too slow and lethargic for those who have less patience, those who are sick or addicted to the above-mentioned instinct. This is attested to by the increasingly frantic howling, the increasingly undisguised snarling of the anarchist dogs that now wander the alleyways of European culture, in apparent opposition to the peaceable and industrious democrats and ideologists of revolution, and still more to the silly philosophasters and brotherhood enthusiasts who call themselves socialists and want a 'free society.' But, in fact, they are one and all united in thorough and instinctive hostility towards all forms of society besides that of the autonomous herd (even to the point of rejecting the concepts of 'master' and 'slave' ni dieu ni matre reads a socialist formula -); they are united in their dogged opposition to any special claims, special rights, or privileges (which means, in the last analysis, that they are opposed to any rights: since when everyone is equal, no one will need 'rights' anymore -); they are united


in their mistrust of punitive justice (as if it were a violation of those who are weaker, a wrong against the necessary Neither God nor master. On the natural history of morals result of all earlier societies -); but they are likewise united in the religion of pity, in sympathy for whatever feels, lives, suffers (down to the animal and up to 'God': - the excessive notion of 'pity for God' belongs in a democratic age -); they are all united in the cries and the impatience of pity, in deadly hatred against suffering in general, in the almost feminine inability to sit watching, to let suffering happen; they are united in the way they involuntarily raise the general level of sensitivity and gloom under whose spell Europe seems threatened with a new Buddhism; they are united in their faith in the morality of communal pity, as if it were morality in itself, the height, the achieved height of humanity, the sole hope for the future, the solace of the present, the great redemption of all guilt from the past: - they are all united in their faith in the community as Redeemer , which is to say: in the herd, in 'themselves' ...


We who have a different faith -, we who consider the democratic movement to be not merely an abased form of political organization, but rather an abased (more specifically a diminished) form of humanity, a mediocritization and depreciation of humanity in value: where do we need to reach with our hopes? - Towards new philosophers , there is no alternative; towards spirits who are strong and original enough to give impetus to opposed valuations and initiate a revaluation and reversal of 'eternal values'; towards those sent out ahead; towards the men of the future who in the present tie the knots and gather the force that compels the will of millennia into new channels. To teach humanity its future as its will ,as dependent on a human will, to prepare for the great risk and wholesale attempt at breeding and cultivation and so to put an end to the gruesome rule of chance and nonsense that has passed for 'history' so far (the nonsense of the 'greatest number' is only its latest form): a new type of philosopher and commander will be needed for this some day, and whatever hidden, dreadful, or benevolent spirits have existed on earth will pale into insignificance beside the image of this type. The image of such leaders hovers before our eyes: - may I say this out loud, you free spirits? The conditions that would have to be partly created and partly exploited for them to come into being; the probable paths and trials that would enable a soul to grow tall and strong enough to feel the compulsion for these tasks; a revaluation of values whose new pressure and hammer will


steel a conscience and transform a heart into bronze to bear the weight of a responsibility like this; and, on the other hand, the necessity of such leaders, the terrible danger that they could fail to appear or simply fail and degenerate - these are our real worries and dark clouds, do you know this, you free spirits? These are the heavy, distant thoughts and storms that traverse the sky of our lives. There are few pains as intense as ever having seen, guessed, or sympathized while an extraordinary person ran off course and degenerated: but someone with an uncommon eye for the overall danger that 'humanity' itself will degenerate , someone like us, who has recognized the outrageous contingency that has been playing games with the future of humanity so far - games in which no hand and not even a 'finger of God' has taken part! - someone who has sensed the disaster that lies hidden in the idiotic guilelessness and credulity of 'modern ideas,' and still more in the whole of Christian-European morality: someone like this will suffer from an unparalleled sense of alarm. In a single glance he will comprehend everything that could be bred from humanity , given a favorable accumulation and intensification of forces and tasks; he will know with all the prescience of his conscience how humanity has still not exhausted its greatest possibilities, and how often the type man has already faced mysterious decisions and new paths: - he will know even better, from his most painful memories, the sorts of miserable things that generally shatter, crush, sink, and turn a development of the highest rank into a miserable affair. The total degeneration of humanity down to what today's socialist fools and nitwits see as their 'man of the future' - as their ideal! - this degeneration and diminution of humanity into the perfect herd animal (or, as they say, into man in a 'free society'), this brutalizing process of turning humanity into stunted little animals with equal rights and equal claims is no doubt possible ! Anyone who has ever thought this possibility through to the end knows one more disgust than other men, - and perhaps a new task as well! ...


At the risk that moralizing will prove once again to be what it always was (namely, an undismayed montrer ses plaies , in the words of Balzac), I will dare to speak out against an inappropriate and harmful shift in the rank order between science and philosophy; this shift has gone completely unnoticed and now threatens to settle in with what looks like the clearest of consciences. I mean: people need to speak from experience (and experience always seems to mean bad experience, doesn't it?) when it comes to such lofty questions of rank, or else they are like blind people talking about colors or like women and artists speaking out against science ('Oh, this awful science,' their instincts and shame will sigh, 'it always gets to the bottom of things!' -). The scientific man's declaration of independence, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the more subtle effects of the democratic way of life (and death): this self-glorification and presumptuousness of the scholar is in the full bloom of spring, flowering everywhere youlook, - which isn't to say that this self-importance has a pleasant smell. 'Awaywithall masters!' - that's what the rabble instinct wants, even here. And now that science has been so utterly successful in fending off theology, after having been its 'handmaiden' for far too long, it is so high in spirits and low on sense that it wants to lay down laws for philosophy and, for once, play at being 'master' - what am I saying! play at being philosopher . My memory (the memory of a scientific man, if you will!) is teeming with the arrogantly naive comments about philosophy and philosophers that I have heard from young natural scientists and old physicians (not to 'Showing one's wounds.' Beyond Good and Evil


mention from the most erudite and conceited scholars of all, the philologists and schoolmen, who are both by profession -). Sometimes it was the specialists and the pigeon-hole dwellers who instinctively resisted all synthetic tasks and skills; at other times it was the diligent workers who smelled the otium and the noble opulence of the philosopher's psychic economy and consequently felt themselves restricted and belittled. Sometimes it was that color-blindness of utilitarian-minded people who considered philosophy to be just a series of refuted systems and a wasteful expenditure that never did anybody 'any good.' Sometimes a fear of disguised mysticism and changes to the limits of knowledge sprang up; at other times, there was disdain for particular philosophers that had unwittingly become a disdain for philosophy in general. In the end, I have found that what usually lies behind young scholars' arrogant devalorizations of philosophy is the nasty after-effect of some philosopher himself. These scholars had, for the most part, stopped listening to this philosopher, but without having emerged from under the spell of his dismissive valuations of other philosophers: - and this resulted in a generalized ill will against all philosophy. (The after-affects of Schopenhauer on Germany in the most recent past seem to me an example of this sort of thing: - with his unintelligent ranting against Hegel, he has caused the whole of the last generation of Germans to break off its ties to German culture, a culture that, all things considered, represented a supreme and divinatory refinement of the historical sense . But Schopenhauer was himself impoverished, insensitive, un-German to the point of genius on precisely this point.) Looking at the overall picture, the damage done to the respectability of philosophy might be primarily due to the human, all-too-human, and, in short, miserable condition of more recent philosophy itself, which has held open the door to the rabble instinct. We have to admit the degree to which our modern world has departed from the whole Heraclitean, Platonic, Empedoclean type (or whatever names all these princely and magnificent hermits of the spirit might have had); and with what justice a worthy man of science can feel that he is of a better type and a better lineage, given the sort of representatives of philosophy who, thanks to current fashions, are just as much talked up these days as they are washed up


(in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin: the anarchist Eugen Duhring and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann). And Leisure.


especially those hodgepodge philosophers who call themselves 'philosophers of reality' or 'positivists' - just the sight of them is enough to instill a dangerous mistrust in the soul of an ambitious young scholar. They are, at best, scholars and specialists themselves - you can just feel it! They have all been defeated but then brought back under the domination of science; they had wanted something more of themselves at one time (without any right to this 'more' and its responsibility) - and now, in word and in deed, they respectably, wrathfully, vengefully represent a skepticism concerning philosophy's master task and authority. In the end: how could it be any other way! Science is thriving these days, its good conscience shines in its face; meanwhile whatever state recent philosophy has gradually sunk to, whatever is left of philosophy today, inspires mistrust and displeasure, if not ridicule and pity. A philosophy reduced to 'epistemology,' which is really no more than a timid epochism and doctrine of abstinence; a philosophy that does not even get over the threshold and scrupulously denies itself the right of entry - that is a philosophy in its last gasps, an end, an agony, something to be pitied. How could such a philosophy dominate ?


There are so many different kinds of dangers involved in the development of a philosopher these days that it can be doubted whether this fruit is still capable of ripening at all. The height and width of the tower of science have grown to be so monstrously vast that the philosopher is that much more likely to become exhausted before he has even finished his education, or to let himself grab hold of something and 'specialize.' And so he is never at his best, never reaches a high point in his development from which he would be able to look over, look around, and look down . Or he gets there too late, when he is already past his prime and his strength has started to fade; or he gets there disabled, having become coarse and degenerate, so that his gaze, his overall value judgment is largely meaningless. Perhaps the very refinement of his intellectual conscience lets him hesitate and be slowed down while underway; he is afraid of being seduced into becoming a dilettante, a millipede with a thousand feet and a thousand feelers; he knows too well that someone who has lost his self-respect will nolongercommandor lead , even in the field of knowledge: unless he wants to become a great actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and rabble-rouser of Beyond Good and Evil


spirits, in short, a seducer. In the end, this is a question of taste, even if it is not a question of conscience. And just to double the philosopher's difficulties again, there is the additional fact that he demands a judgment of himself, a Yes or a No, not about science but about life and the value of life. It is only with reluctance that he comes to believe he has a right or even a duty to render this sort of a judgment, and he has to draw on the most wide-ranging (and perhaps the most disturbing and destructive) experiences so that he can look - hesitantly, skeptically, silently - for a path to this right and this belief. In fact, the masses have misjudged and mistaken the philosopher for a long time, sometimes confusing him with the scientific man and ideal scholar, and sometimes with the religiously elevated, desensualized, desecularized enthusiasts and intoxicated men of God. If you hear anyone praised these days for living 'wisely' or 'like a philosopher' it basically just means he is 'clever and keeps out of the way.' To the rabble, wisdom seems like a kind of escape, a device or trick for pulling yourself out of the game when things get rough. But the real philosopher (and isn't this how it seems to us , my friends?) lives 'unphilosophically,' 'unwisely,' in a manner which is above all not clever , and feels the weight and duty of a hundred experiments and temptations of life: - he constantly puts himself at risk, he plays the rough game ...


Compared to a genius, which is to say: compared to a being that either begets or gives birth (taking both words in their widest scope -), the scholar, the average man of science, is somewhat like an old maid. Like her, he has no expertise in the two most valuable acts performed by humanity. And, as a sort of compensation, both the scholar and the old maid are admitted to be respectable - respectability is always emphasized - although in both cases we are annoyed by the obligatory nature of this admission. Let us look more closely: what is the scientific man? In the first place, he is an ignoble type of person with the virtues that an ignoble type will have: this type is not dominant, authoritative, or self-sufficient. He is industrious, he is patiently lined up in an orderly array, he is regular and moderate in his abilities and needs, he has an instinct for his own kind and for the needs of his kind. These needs include: that piece of In German: Versuchen und Versuchungen (see note ,p. above).


independence and green pasture without which there is no quiet for him to work in, that claim to honor and acknowledgment (whose first and foremost presupposition is recognition and being recognizable -), that sunshine of a good name, that constant seal on his value and his utility which is needed, time and again, in order to overcome the inner mistrust that lies at the bottom of the heart of all dependent men and herd animals. It is only fair that the scholar has the diseases and bad habits of an ignoble type as well. He is full of petty jealousies and has eyes like a hawk for the base aspects of natures whose heights he cannot attain. He is friendly, but only like someone who lets himself go without letting himself really flow out; and just when he is standing in front of people who really do flow out, he will act all the more cold and reserved, - at times like this, his eye is like a smooth and unwilling lake that will no longer allow a single ripple of joy or sympathy. The worst and most dangerous thing that a scholar is capable of doing comes from his type's instinct for mediocrity: from that Jesuitism of mediocrity that instinctively works towards the annihilation of the exceptional man and tries to break every taut bow or - even better! - to unbend it. Unbending it with consideration, and, of course, a gentle hand -, unbending it with friendly pity: that is the true art of Jesuitism, which has always known how to introduce itself as a religion of pity. -


Howevergratefullywemightapproachthe objective spirit - and who hasn't been sick to death at least once of everything subjective, with its damned ipsissimosity ! - nevertheless, in the end we even have to be cautious of our gratitude, and put an end to the exaggerated terms in which people have recently been celebrating the desubjectivization and depersonification of spirit, as if this were some sort of goal in itself, some sort of redemption or transfiguration. This kind of thing tends to happen within the pessimist school, which has reasons of its own for regarding 'disinterested knowing' with the greatest respect. The objective man who no longer swears or complains like the pessimist does, the ideal scholar who expresses the scientific instinct as it finally blossoms and blooms all the way (after things have gone partly or wholly wrong a thousand times over) - he is certainly Nietzsche's coinage from the Latin ' ipsissima ' meaning 'very own.' Beyond Good and Evil


one of the most expensive tools there is: but he belongs in the hands of someone more powerful. He is only a tool, we will say: he is a mirror ,-he is not an 'end in himself.' The objective man is really a mirror: he is used to subordinating himself in front of anything that wants to be known, without any other pleasure than that of knowing, of 'mirroring forth.' He waits until something comes along and then spreads himself gently towards it, so that even light footsteps and the passing by of a ghostly being are not lost on his surface and skin. He has so thoroughly become a passageway and reflection of strange shapes and events, that whatever is left in him of a 'person' strikes him as accidental, often arbitrary, and still more often as disruptive. It takes an effort for him to think back on 'himself,' and he is not infrequently mistaken when he does. He easily confuses himself with others, he is wrong about his own basic needs, and this is the only respect in which he is crude and careless. Maybe his health is making him suffer, or the pettiness and provincial airs of a wife or a friend, or the lack of companions and company, - all right then, he makes himself think about his sufferings: but to no avail! His thoughts have already wandered off, towards more general issues, and by the next day he does not know how to help himself any more than he knew the day before. He has lost any serious engagement with the issue as well as the time to spend on it: he is cheerful, not for lack of needs but for lack of hands to grasp his neediness. Theobligingmannerinwhichhetypicallyapproaches things and experiences, the sunny and natural hospitality with which he accepts everything that comes at him, his type of thoughtless goodwill, of dangerous lack of concern for Yeses and Noes: oh, there are plenty of times when he has to pay for these virtues of his! - and being human, he all too easily becomes the caput mortuum of these virtues. If you want him to love or hate (I mean love and hate as a god, woman, or animal would understand the terms -) he will do what he can and give what he can. But do not be surprised if it is not much, - if this is where he comes across as fake, fragile, questionable, and brittle. His love is


forced, his hatred artificial and more like un tour de force , a little piece of vanity and exaggeration. He is sincere only to the extent that he is allowed to be objective: he is 'nature' and 'natural' only in his cheerful totality. His mirror-like soul is forever smoothing itself out; it does not know how to affirm or negate any more. He does not command; and neither does he destroy. Worthless residue.


' Je ne m'eprise presque rien ,' he says with Leibniz: that presque should not be overlooked or underestimated! He is no paragon of humanity; he does not go in front of anyone or behind. In general, he puts himself at too great a distance to have any basis for choosing between good or evil. If people have mistaken him for a philosopher for so long, for a Caesar-like man who cultivates and breeds, for the brutal man of culture - then they have paid him much too high an honor and overlooked what is most essential about him, - he is a tool, a piece of slave (although, without a doubt, the most sublime type of slave) but nothing in himself, presque rien ! The objective person is a tool, an expensive measuring instrument and piece of mirror art that is easily injured and spoiled and should be honoredandprotected; but he is not a goal, not a departure or a fresh start, he is not the sort of complementary person in which the rest of existence justifies itself. He is not a conclusion - and still less a beginning, begetter or first cause; there is nothing tough, powerful or self-supporting that wants to dominate. Rather, he is only a gentle, brushed-off, refined, agile pot of forms, who first has to wait for some sort of content or substance in order 'to shape' himself accordingly, - he is generally a man without substance or content, a 'selfless' man. And consequently, in parenthesi , nothing for women. -


When a philosopher these days makes it known that he is not a skeptic, - and I hope that this could be detected in the account of the objective spirit just given - everyone gets upset. People look at him apprehensively, they have so many questions, questions ... in fact, frightened eavesdroppers (and there are crowds of them these days) will begin to consider him dangerous. It is as if they could hear, in his rejection of skepticism, some sort of evil and ominous sound in the distance, as if a new explosive were being tested somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian nihiline , a pessimism bonae voluntatis that does not just say No or will No, but - the very thought is terrible! does No.Itis generally acknowledged nowadays that no tranquilizer or sedative works 'I despise almost nothing.' In lines that follow, presque means 'almost' and presque rien means 'almost nothing.' A neologism coined from 'nihilism.' Of goodwill. Beyond Good and Evil


better against this type of 'goodwill' - a will to the actual, violent negation of life - than skepticism, the soft, sweet, soothing, poppy flower of skepticism; and even Hamlet is prescribed by physicians today as a protection against 'spirit' and its underground rumblings. 'Aren't people's ears already filled with enough bad sounds?' the skeptic asks, being a friend of peace and almost a type of security police: 'This subterranean Nois awful! Be quiet already, you pessimistic moles!' Which is to say: the skeptic, that gentle creature, is all too easily frightened. His conscience has been trained to jump at every no, or even at a decisive and hardened yes, and to feel it like a bite. Yes! and No! - this is contrary to morality, as far as he is concerned. Conversely, he loves to treat his virtues to a feast of noble abstinence, when, for instance, he says, with Montaigne: 'What do I know?'OrwithSocrates:'IknowthatIdon'tknowanything.'Or'Idon't trust myself here, there aren't any doors open to me.' Or: 'Even if one were open, why go in right away!' Or: 'What good are rash hypotheses? It might very well be good taste not to formulate any hypotheses at all. When something is crooked, do you people really need to straighten it right away? or plug something into every hole? Isn't there plenty of time for that? Doesn't time have plenty of time? Oh, you fiends, why can't you just wait a while? Even uncertainty has its charms, even the Sphinx is a Circe, even Circe was a philosopher.' - This is how a skeptic comforts himself; and it is true that he needs some comfort. Skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain complex physiological condition which in layman's terms is called weak nerves or a sickly constitution. It originates whenever races or classes that have been separated for a long time are suddenly and decisively interbred. The different standards and values, as it were, get passed down through the bloodline to the next generation where everything is in a state of restlessness, disorder, doubt, experimentation. The best forces have inhibitory effects, the virtues themselves do not let each other


strengthen and grow, both body and soul lack a center of balance, a center of gravity and the assurance of a pendulum. But what is most profoundly sick and degenerate about such hybrids is the will : they no longer have any sense of independence in decision-making, or the bold feeling of pleasure in willing, - they doubt whether there is 'freedom of will,' even in their dreams. Our contemporary Europe, the site of an absurdly sudden experiment in the radical mixing of classes and consequently of races, is therefore skeptical from its heights to its depths, sometimes with that agile kind of skepticism that leaps impatiently and


licentiously from one branch to another; at other times it is gloomy like a cloud overloaded with question-marks - and often sick to death of its will! Paralysis of the will: where won't you find this cripple today? And often how nicely dressed! How seductively dressed! This illness has the prettiest fancy-dress clothes and liar's outfits. And most of what presents itself in the shop windows these days as 'objectivity,' for instance, or 'scientificity,' ' l'art pour l'art ,' or 'pure, will-less knowing,' is only dressed-up skepticism and paralysis of the will, - I will vouch for this diagnosis of the European disease. - The disease of the will has spread unevenly across Europe. It appears greatest and most varied where the culture has been at home for the longest period of time; and it becomes increasingly faint to the extent that 'the barbarian' still - or once again asserts his rights under the sagging robes of occidental cultivation. This is why the will is most sick in present-day France, a fact which can be logically concluded as easily as it can be palpably felt. France has always had the brilliant historical sense to turn even disastrous changes of its spirit into something charming and seductive. Now, it clearly indicates its culturally dominant position within Europe by being the school and showcase for all the magic spells of skepticism. The strength to will and, in fact, a will to will at length, is somewhat more vigorous in Germany, and stronger in the north of Germany than in the center. It is considerably stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica; in one place it is bound up with apathy, in another, with hard heads, - not to mention Italy, which is too young to know what it wants, and which first needs to prove that it can will -. But it is the strongest of all and the most amazing in that vast intermediary zone where Europe, as it were, flows back into Asia: in Russia. There, the strength to will has been laid aside and stored up over a long time; there, the will is waiting threateningly (uncertain whether as a will of negation or of affirmation), to be discharged (to borrow a favorite term from today's physicists). More than just Indian wars and Asian intrigues might be needed to relieve Europe of its greatest danger - inner rebellions might be needed as


well, the dispersion of the empire into small bodies, and, above all, the introduction of parliamentary nonsense, added to which would be the requirement that every man read his newspaper over breakfast. This is not something I am hoping for. I would prefer the opposite, - I mean the sort of increase in the threat Russia poses that 'Art for art's sake.'


would force Europe into choosing to become equally threatening and, specifically, to acquire a single will by means of a new caste that would rule over Europe, a long, terrible will of its own, that could give itself millennia-long goals: - so that the long, spun-out comedy of Europe's petty provincialism and its dynastic as well as democratic fragmentation of the will could finally come to an end. The time for petty politics is over: the next century will bring the struggle for the domination of the earth - the compulsion to great politics.


The extent to which the new, warlike age that we Europeans have obviously entered into may, perhaps, also be favorable to the development of another, stronger type of skepticism - for the time being, I would like to restrict my remarks on this matter to a parable that the friends of German history will already understand. That completely unscrupulous devotee of tall, handsome grenadiers who, as king of Prussia, brought a military and skeptical genius into being (and with it, fundamentally, that new type of German which is only now approaching in triumph), the questionable, mad father of Frederick the Great, had the grasp and lucky claw of a genius too, although on one point only: he knew what was missing in Germany in those days, and which lack was a hundred times more urgent and anxiety-provoking than the lack of something like education or social decorum, - his dislike for young Frederick came from the anguish of a profound instinct. Men were lacking ; and he suspected, to his most bitter distress, that his own son was not man enough. He was wrong about this, but who wouldn't have been wrong in his place? He saw his son falling prey to atheism, esprit , and the entertaining, happy-go-lucky spirit of clever Frenchmen: he saw that enormous bloodsucker, the spider of skepticism, in the background, and he suspected the incurable misery of a heart that was no longer hard enough for evil or for good, of a shattered will that no longer commanded, that was no longer able to command. Meanwhile, however, a harsher and more dangerous new type of skepticism was growing in his son (and who knows how much it was encouraged precisely by his father's hatred and the icy melancholy of an isolated will?) - the Frederick William I.


skepticismofaboldmasculinity,whichismostcloselyrelatedtothegenius for war and conquest, and which first entered Germany in the shape of the great Frederick. This skepticism despises and nevertheless appropriates; it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe but does not die out on this account; it gives the spirit a dangerous freedom, but is severe on the heart. The German form of skepticism (being a continued Frederickianism that has been intensified to the most spiritual degree) has put Europe under the dominion of German spirit with its critical and historical mistrust for a long time. Thanks to the unyielding strength and tenacity in the masculine character of the great German philologists and critical historians (seen properly, they were also all artists of decay and destruction), and in spite of all the romanticism in music and philosophy, a new concept of the German spirit is gradually emerging, and it clearly tends towards a masculine skepticism: it might be the intrepidity of the gaze, the courage and severity of the dissecting hand, or the tenacious will to dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized North Pole expeditions under desolate and dangerous skies. Warm-blooded and superficial humanitarians may have good reasons for crossing themselves in front of this spirit; cet esprit fataliste, ironique, m'ephistoph'elique as Michelet calls it, not without a shudder. But this 'man' in the German spirit, which has awoken Europe from its 'dogmatic slumber,' - if you want to understand how distinctive the fear of this 'man' really is, just remember the earlier conception that this one had to overcome, - and how it was not so long ago that a masculinized woman could dare, with boundless presumption, to commend the Germans to European sympathies as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed, poetic fools. You can really understand Napoleon's surprise when he got to see Goethe: it showed what people had understood by the term 'German spirit' for centuries. ' Voil'a un homme! ' - which was to say: 'Now there's a man ! And I'd only expected a German!' - 'This fatalistic, ironical, Mephistophelian spirit.'


An allusion to Kant's claim in the Prolegomena zu einer jeden k unftigen Metaphysik ( Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics )( ) that Hume's empiricism awoke him from the dogmatic slumber of rationalism. Madame de Sta el in her De l'Allemagne ( On Germany )( ). See Goethe's Unterredung mit Napoleon ( Discussion with Napoleon )( October ). Beyond Good and Evil


So, if something in the image of future philosophers makes us suspect that they will, perhaps, be skeptics (in the sense just mentioned), then it would only indicate some aspect of them and not who they themselves really are. Theycouldbecalledcriticswithequaljustification; and they will certainly be engaged in experiments. I have already laid particular emphasis on the notions of tempting, attempting, and the joy of experimenting in the name that I have dared to christen them with: is this because, as critics in body and soul, they love to experiment in a new, perhaps broader, perhaps more dangerous sense? In their passion for knowledge, won't they need to go further, with bold and painful experiments, than the faint-hearted, pampered taste of a democratic century can think proper? - Without a doubt: these coming philosophers will be least able to dispense with the qualities that distinguish the critic from the skeptic - qualities that are rather seriousandbynomeansharmless.Imean:thecertaintyofvaluestandards,the conscious implementation of a unity of method, a sly courage, a solitary stance, and capacity for responsibility. In fact, these philosophers admit to taking pleasure in saying no, in dissecting, and in a certain level-headed cruelty that knows how to guide a knife with assurance and subtlety, even when the heart is bleeding. They will be more severe (and perhaps not always with themselves alone) than humane people might wish them to be. They will not engage with 'truth' in such a way that it 'pleases' or 'elevates' or 'inspires' them; they will hardly believe that the truth ,of all things, would keep the feelings this amused. These severe spirits will smile when they hear someone say: 'This thought elevates me: how could it fail to be true?' Or: 'This work charms me: how could it fail to be beautiful?' Or: 'That artist ennobles me: how could he fail to be noble?' - they might be ready not just with a smile but with a genuine disgust for all these over-enthusiasms, idealisms, femininities, hermaphrodisms. And anyone who knows how to follow these spirits down into the secret chambers of their heart is not likely to discover any intention to reconcile 'Christian feelings' with 'ancient taste' or with anything like 'modern


parliamentarianism' (although these sorts of conciliatory overtures are said to take place in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory century, even among philosophers). These philosophers of the future will demand (and not only of themselves) critical discipline and every habit that leads to cleanliness and rigor in matters of the spirit. They might even wear these


like a type of jewel they have on display, - nevertheless, they still do not want to be called critics. They think it is no small disgrace for philosophy these days, when people are so happy to announce: 'Philosophy itself is criticism and critical science - and nothing else whatsoever!' However much all the French and German positivists might approve of this evaluation of philosophy (- and it might even have flattered Kant's heart and taste: just think of the titles of his major works -), our new philosophers will nevertheless say: critics are tools of philosophy and that is precisely why, being tools, they are so far from being philosophers! Even the great Chinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic. -


I am going to insist that people finally stop mistaking philosophical laborers and scientific men in general for philosophers, - that here, of all places, people be strict about giving 'each his due' and not too much to the one, and much too little to the other. In the course of his education, the genuine philosopher might have been required to stand on each of the steps where his servants, the philosophical scientific laborers, have come to a stop, - have had to come to a stop. Perhaps the philosopher has had to be a critic and a skeptic and a dogmatist and historian and, moreover, a poet and collector and traveler and guesser of riddles and moralist and seer and 'free spirit' and practically everything, in order to run through the range of human values and value feelings and be able to gaze with many eyes and consciences from the heights into every distance, from the depths up to every height, from the corner onto every expanse. But all these are only preconditions for his task: the task itself has another will, it calls for him to create values . The project for philosophical laborers on the noble model of Kant and Hegel is to establish some large class of given values (which is to say: values that were once posited and created but have come to dominate and have been called 'truths' for a long time) and press it into formulas, whether in the realm of logic or politics (morality) or art . It is up to these researchers to make everything that has happened or been valued so far look clear, obvious, comprehensible, and manageable, to abbreviate everything long, even 'time' itself, and to overwhelm the entire past. This is an enormous and wonderful task, in whose service any subtle An allusion to Kant, who spent his life in K onigsberg. Beyond Good and Evil


pride or tough will can certainly find satisfaction. But true philosophers are commanders and legislators : they say 'That is how it should be!' they are the ones who first determine the 'where to?' and 'what for?' of people, which puts at their disposal the preliminary labor of all philosophical laborers, all those who overwhelm the past. True philosophers reach for the future with a creative hand and everything that is and was becomes a means, a tool, a hammer for them. Their 'knowing' is creating , their creating is a legislating, their will to truth is will to power . - Are there philosophers like this today? Have there ever been philosophers like this? Won't there have to be philosophers like this? ...