Nietzsche Beyond Good and Ewil Edited by Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman more information WWW: cambridge org/9780521770781 Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy This page intentionally left blank CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Beyond Good and Evil


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Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame DESMOND M. CLARKE Professor of Philosophy at University College Cork The main objective of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy is to expand the range, variety, and quality of texts in the history of philosophy which are available in English. The series includes texts by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate and postgraduate level and will be of interest not only to students of philosophy, but also to a wider audience of readers in the history of science, the history of theology and the history of ideas. For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book.


EDITED BY ROLF-PETER HORSTMANN Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin JUDITH NORMAN Trinity University, Texas TRANSLATED BY JUDITH NORMAN Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , United Kingdom Published in the United States by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521770781 Cambridge University Press 2002 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2001 ISBN-13 978-0-511-06877-5 eBook (EBL) ISBN-10 0-511-06877-8 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-521-77078-1 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-77078-5 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-77913-5 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-77913-8 paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.


Chronology, page vii = xxix. Furtherreading, page vii = xxxii. Noteonthetext, page vii = xxxiv. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, page vii = . Preface, page vii = . Part Ontheprejudicesofphilosophers, page vii = . Part Thefreespirit, page vii = . Part Thereligiouscharacter, page vii = . Part Epigramsandentr'actes, page vii = . Part Onthenaturalhistoryofmorals, page vii = . Part Wescholars, page vii = . Part Ourvirtues, page vii = . Part Peoplesandfatherlands, page vii = . Part Whatisnoble?, page vii = . Fromhighmountains:Aftersong, page vii = . Glossaryofnames, page vii = . Index, page vii = v


Beyond Good and Evil ( BGE ) is often considered to be one of Friedrich Nietzsche's greatest books. Though it is by no means clear what criteria this assessment is based on, it is easy to understand how it comes about. It seems to be an expression of the feeling that in this book Nietzsche gives the most comprehensible and detached account of the major themes that concerned him throughout his life. Nietzsche was suspicious of almost everything addressed in this book - whether it be knowledge, truth, philosophy, or morality and religion. He regarded them as the source, or at least the effect, of a misguided tendency in the development of human nature: one that has led to disastrous cultural, social, and psychological consequences. At the same time he lets us share his more constructive views as well, mainly his views on how he wants us to perceive the world andtochangeourlivesinordertoliveuptothisnewperception.Hespeaks of perspectivism, the will to power, of human nobility ( Vornehmheit ) and of the conditions of a life liberated from the constraints of oppressive tradition. In the middle of the book, he even adds a number of short I thank DartmouthCollegeandespeciallySallySedgwickandMargaretRobinson,whosegenerous hospitality gave me the opportunity to write this text. Special thanks to Karl Ameriks and Gary Hatfield for transforming my 'English' into English and to Andreas Kemmerling for helpful suggestions. Very special thanks to Dina Emundts for all sorts of comments. The version printed here owes much to careful editing by Hilary Gaskin. See, for example, the Introductions to BGE by Walter Kaufmann (Vintage: New York, )and Michael Tanner (Penguin: Harmondsworth, ; translation R. Hollingdale), and also Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Meridian Books: New York, ), and Tanner, Nietzsche (Oxford University Press: Oxford/New York, ). References for all quotations from BGE are to section numbers. vii


aphorisms, and he ends the book with a poem that hints at the artistic background to his concern with decadence and the means for overcoming it. Thus it would seem that the whole range of Nietzsche's interests, his prejudices and his preferences, his loathings and his hopes, and above all his deep insights into our situation in the modern world, are united in an exemplary way in BGE , and for this reason it is a great book. Although there is something to be said for this view, it is not the only view that is possible. There are quite a number of thinkers who would insist that it makes no sense at all to attribute greatness to any of Nietzsche's works. For these readers, all of Nietzsche's writings are flawed by serious shortcomings that justify fundamental complaints, ranging from accusations that they are utterly irrational, or devoid of informative content, to the conviction that they contain nothing but silly proclamations based on unwarranted generalizations - or a mixture of both. According to proponents of this view, the best way to think of Nietzsche's works is as the disturbing documents of the creative process of someone who was on the verge of madness. To call any of his works great would therefore amount to a categorical mistake. Interestingly enough, this bleak evaluation is not based on any disagreement with what the work's admirers tell us we will find in it, or even any disagreement with the claim that it gives us the quintessential Nietzsche.


It is a perplexing fact that it is by no means easy to decide which of these two conflicting attitudes towards BGE should prevail, and in the end it maybearatherpersonalmatter.Neverthelessitispossibletoidentifysome conditions that will influence how we are likely to think about the merits of this work. Three main factors should be taken into consideration. First, muchdependsonhowweinterpret the aims pursued by Nietzsche's work in general and BGE in particular. Second, our evaluation will depend on the amount of tolerance and sympathy that we are prepared to mobilize towards Nietzsche the person, and also towards certain tendencies in bourgeoiscultureinGermanyinthesecondhalfofthenineteenthcentury. Thethirdandmostimportantfactor,however,isthewaythatwefeelabout theveryframeworkinwhichallourdealingswithwhatwetaketobereality are embedded: if we are confident that our normal outlook on whatever concerns us has been proven to be ultimately right, or at least on the right track, then chances are high that we will end up thinking of Nietzsche and BGE as a nuisance. If we are not convinced of the soundness of our normal views, then we might have second thoughts about things, and in viii that case a book like BGE might be considered illuminating and even helpful.


Let us start with Nietzsche the person. In the history of art, science, philosophy, and even literature one very often finds that in order to appreciate or to evaluate a work it is not much of an advantage to be familiar with its author and his life: an intellectual or artistic product is better judged on its own merits than on the basis of uncertain knowledge about the idiosyncratic features and muddled purposes of its author. Moreover, in some cases authors intentionally withdraw from their products in an attempt to become invisible and to let the work speak for itself, and thus leave us very few personal clues in their works. Rousseau could serve as an example of the first kind of case and Kant of the second; Kant goes so far as to use the phrase de nobis ipsis silemus ('of our own person we will say nothing') as a motto for his main work. We therefore tend to believe that a distinction can be drawn between the private views of the author and the meaning of the work which the author produces. Yet there are some works with respect to which such a consideration does not so easily apply. These are works whose very meaning is tied intrinsically to the person of their author, as is the case with diaries, letters, personal notes, or autobiographies. Here our knowledge about the author, or perhaps an understanding of the situation the author is in, are necessary ingredients for an appreciation of the text. There are many reasons to presume that Nietzsche thought of many of his texts as being like diaries or personal notes that tell us something about himself and about his perspective on the matters they address, rather than as products that aim at objective, non-personal results. Hence, his biography may be of interest in any attempt to assess his work. Nietzsche's life is surely not a success story; on the contrary, it is a rather sad story of misery and failure. It is the story of a man who from the beginning of his adult life, until the sudden and catastrophic end of his productive period, was confronted with embarrassing and humiliating experiences. This is true of his private life as well as of his relations with the intellectual community of his time. He was plagued by ill health, a psychosomatic wreck, suffering from all sorts of diseases ranging from chronic nervous ailments and severe eye problems, which left him almost ix


blind, to extremely exhausting states of prolonged migraine. These conditions made life tolerable for him only in a few places in northern Italy (in the winter) and the Swiss Engadine (in the summer), and it is in these places that he spent most of his time in the s. His social relations were always, to put it mildly, somewhat complicated. Those who apparently cared most about him, his mother and his sister, he found oppressive and distasteful because they represented a type of personality he deeply despised. Though he prided himself on being comfortable with women, he does not seem to have been very successful in establishing emotionally satisfying relationships with them, which is hardly surprising given his views on women and on femininity ( Weiblichkeit ) in general. Things did not go much better with his friends. The people whom he called 'friends' he quite often spoke of with great resentment: he charged all of them with a lack of sensitivity toward him, he complained that none of them ever bothered to study his works, and he accused them of failing to defend him against public neglect. In short, he suffered deeply from a sense of solitude and isolation, from not being appropriately acknowledged because of the supposed imperfections of the people around him. To make things even worse, Nietzsche was not given the opportunity to compensate for the shortcomings of his private life by enjoying institutional and public success in his roles as a university teacher and author. Although he made a very promising start - he was appointed professor of classics at Basle university at the early age of twenty-four - his academic career disintegrated rapidly, in part because of his poor health and in part because he became annoyed with his teaching duties. As for his fortunes as an author, not much can be said that is positive. His first book, the now highly acclaimed treatise The Birth of Tragedy , did at least attract the attention of classicists (though their reaction to it was for the most


See the annihilating remark aimed at both of them in Ecce Homo which culminates in Nietzsche's pronouncement: 'I confess that the deepest objection to the Eternal Recurrence, my real idea from the abyss, is always my mother and my sister' ( KSA VI, , translation from Tanner, Nietzsche , p. ). KSA refers to S amtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe , ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari, vols. (de Gruyter: Berlin, ); this edition is based on the critical edition of Nietzsche's works, Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari, vols. to date (de Gruyter: Berlin, -). Though Nietzsche addresses this topic in BGE as well ( et seq .), the general tendency of his outlook on women is documented most succinctly in the relevant passage of Ecce Homo ('Why I write such good books,' ). A good example of this assessment of his friends is again to be found in Ecce Homo ('The case of Wagner,' ). x part emphatically negative) and of members of the Wagnerian community (including Wagner himself). But soon he had to realize that there was only a marginal interest among the public in his way of dealing with issues, whether they were philosophical topics such as truth and the metaphysical foundations of knowledge, topics concerning the history and value of religion and morality, or topics such as the critical assessment of modern culture and ideas about how to overcome what he considered to be the fundamental problems of modernity. This lack of interest showed in the dismal number of copies sold of his books.


The most discouraging experience for Nietzsche, however, may not have been this failure to gain a wider recognition. If he could have believed that his few readers represented some sort of elite, perhaps a group of distinguished intellectuals, then their taking notice of his writings would have been of importance to him and this might have counterbalanced his lack of public success. Unfortunately he could not entertain even that belief. From the very few reactions he became aware of - mostly reviews of his books in more or less obscure journals - he had to conclude that he was read by only a few readers - and the wrong ones. In his view, his readership consisted of people either unable or unwilling (or both) to understand him adequately. He blamed his readers for not being in the least prepared to give credit to his intentions and for being attentive only to those points which conveniently confirmed them in their own negative preconceptions. What he was missing on a fundamental level was a readiness on the part of readers to explore things his way, a feeling of intellectual kinship between author and audience, or, to put it another way,hedeeplycravedrecognitionfromanaudiencethathethoughtfitting. This is touchingly expressed in two short remarks from Ecce Homo . The first relates explicitly only to his Zarathustra, though it is quite likely that Nietzsche thought it true of his other writings as well: 'In order to See the Introduction by Raymond Geuss to the edition of The Birth of Tragedy in this series (Cambridge University Press, ). Of the book Nietzsche valued most, Zarathustra , whose first three parts were published separately in and , only about sixty to seventy copies each were sold within the first three years after their appearance (see letter to Franz Overbeck, summer : KSB VII, pp. - ). The fourth part of the Zarathustra was published in in a private edition of only forty copies and was not accessible to a wider public before . BGE did not fare much better: copies were sold within a year (see letter to Peter Gast, June : KSB VIII, pp. - ). Nietzsche comments (in the same letter to Gast): 'Instructive! Namely, they simply don't want my literature.' It seems that most of his other books had the same fate - they too were utterly neglected during the period in his life when he would still have cared about their success. xi


understand anything at all from my Zarathustra , you might need to be conditioned as I am - with one foot beyond life.' The second remark delineates what he takes to be his ideal reader, and there is no doubt that he meant what he says: 'When I call up the image of a perfect reader, what emerges is a monster of courage and curiosity, who is also supple, clever, cautious, a born adventurer and discoverer.' Whatemergesis a picture of a totally isolated, highly neurotic man who had to try hard to avoid thinking of himself as a complete failure. His way of dealing with this situation seems to have been simply not to accept the idea that all these annoying circumstances might have been brought about partly by particularities or deficiencies that could be traced back to his own person, so he managed to combine a perfectly clear and even realistic assessment of what was happening to him with an unshakeable conviction that all this had nothing to do with him and revealed nothing about him. It is this ability which, in my view, accounts for two dominant traits that appear in his published works. The first is that he never even came close to considering the possibility that - given the general intellectual climate of his time - his lack of success as an author might have something to do with his pursuing the 'wrong' topics in a 'wrong' way. It never crossed his mind that what he thought to be an interesting, novel, and valuable insight might indeed have been exactly what it seemed to be to almost all of his contemporaries - an overstated triviality, an extremely one-sided exaggeration or an embarrassing piece of bad reasoning. He simply stuck to the points he felt he had to make, deeply convinced of being on the right track, and fending off all signs of criticism or neglect with the maxim 'so much the worse for the critic.' Ecce Homo ('Why I am so wise,' end of ).


In Ecce Homo Nietzsche even presents an explanation as to why he believes this stance to be perfectly reasonable: 'Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows. For what one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear. Now let us imagine an extreme case: that a book speaks of nothing but events that lie altogether beyond the possibility of any frequent or even rare experience - that it is the first language for a new series of experiences. In that case, simply nothing will be heard, but there will be the acoustic illusion that where nothing is heard, nothing is there ... Whoever thought he had understood something of me, had made up something out of me after his own image ... and whoever had understood nothing of me, denied that I need to be considered at all.' 'Why I write such good books,' , Ibid. ('Why I write such good books,' end of ). In the same text he mentions explicitly the reactions to BGE as an example of how severely it was misunderstood or, to use his terminology, how gravely this book was sinned against because its readers were not up to its challenge ('Why I write such good books,' end of ). xii This attitude becomes increasingly visible in his writings after Zarathustra and culminates in his late texts of , especially in Ecce Homo . Here we find brilliant and witty remarks which rightly became notorious (though Nietzsche himself might not have found them very amusing, because they can also be read as documents of despair). I quote two of them: 'We all know, several of us even know from experience, what it is to have long ears. Well then, I will dare to claim that I have the smallest ears. This is of no little interest to women - it seems they think I understand them better? ... I am the anti-ass par excellence and this makes me a world-historical monster - I am, in Greek, but not only in Greek, the Antichrist .' The other is: 'I know my fate. One day, my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous - a crisis the like of which the world has never seen, the most profound collision of conscience, of a decision brought about against everything that has ever been believed, demanded, or held holy so far. I am not a man. I am dynamite.'


The second trait which we find in Nietzsche's writings is closely connected to his inability to assess himself in the light of others' reactions. It consists in his total unconcern about the tenability of his views when judged according to standards that he thinks are alien to his approach. Starting from the conviction that there is no common ground between him and his reader, that what he has to say is most likely incomprehensible to almost everybody else, he does not feel obliged to enter the social game of competitive discourse. He refuses to try to convince people by somehow connecting to their way of thinking; he does not refute possible arguments against the points he wants to make by giving reasons in their favor. Instead, he makes abundantly clear his contempt for 'normal' thinking and his impatience with the evaluations of others. It is this stance which gives so many readers the impression of an overwhelming polemical element in Nietzsche's literary presentation of his views. He reinforces it by insisting over and over again that what he has to tell us are above all his truths. The claim to exclusivity is meant to imply both that his main concern is not whether we find these truths convincing, and translation from W. Kaufmann, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (Vintage: New York, ), p. . Ecce Homo , 'Why I write such good books,' end of , translation Kaufmann, p. . Ibid ., 'Why I am a destiny,' beginning of , translation Kaufmann, p. . xiii Introduction that he does not pretend to have found the Truth, for he thinks this is a metaphysical illusion anyway.


Thus we find embedded in Nietzsche's basic view of himself the recommendation not that we read his texts as aiming at 'objectively valid' judgments, at judgments that are (metaphysically) true irrespective of the cultural and psychological context in which they are made (whatever that may be), but that we think of them as narratives that he invites us to listen to, without really obliging us to believe them if we are not the right kind of person. This does not mean that the stories he has to tell us about, say, truth, morality, the will to power, or culture are, in his view, on a par with fictions, pleasant or otherwise. On the contrary, he believed his stories to be the ultimate stories, the stories that are destined to become the standard versions of our assessment of these phenomena. This is not because his narratives are objectively, or in a context-free sense, the most fitting; rather, they will succeed because eventually people will change to a condition where they appreciate the fact that these narratives are best suited to capture their sense of the right perspective on phenomena if they are considered against the background of what for them is the real meaning of life.


Before looking more closely at some aspects of BGE itself, let me summarize what I take to be the lessons for approaching Nietzsche's writings that can be learned from his personal situation and his way of dealing with it. They take the form of three warnings: ( ) do not expect these writings to express impartial views on whatever subject they address - they express, in an emphatic sense, Nietzsche's own views; ( ) do not be annoyed by his obsession with apodictic statements whose immense generality very often contradicts both normal expectations of modesty and the most obvious requirements of common sense - these stylistic eccentricities reflect his resolute disdain for what most people cherish, especially people who he suspects are not willing to listen to him; ( ) never forget that the author does not want to get mixed up with 'us,' his normal insensitive 'academic' readers. He does not want to be 'one of us' - instead he insists on what he calls 'distance,' in order to uphold his view of himself and to remind us of his uniqueness. A last quotation from Ecce Homo may highlight these points: ' Listen to me [the emphasis is on the 'me']. For I am thus and thus. Do not, above all, confound me. ' Ibid ., Preface, . xiv


BGE is the first book Nietzsche published after Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Henevergaveuponthenotionthat all he really wanted to say is contained in Zarathustra , and this led him to claim that the works he wrote after Zarathustra are essentially nothing but elaborations and explications of ideas already present in his opus magnum . This claim has been disputed by quite a number of his commentators, firstly because many of the most central ideas in Zarathustra cease to play an important role in his later writings, and secondly because the literary form of the later writings connects them much more closely to his books prior to Zarathustra than to Zarathustra itself. However that may be, Nietzsche himself was of the opinion that Zarathustra set the stage for everything he had to do subsequently. He writes: 'The task for the years that followed [i.e. the years after Zarathustra ] was mapped out as clearly as possible. Once the yes-saying part of my task had been solved [by means of Zarathustra ], it was time for the no-saying, no-doing part.' This seems to imply that he regarded his postZarathustra writings as consisting of predominantly critical essays. BGE is best known to a wider public for its proverbs. Indeed, some of Nietzsche's best-known maxims are assembled in this text, ranging from perspicuous insights to highly controversial statements. Starting with the Preface, where we find his much used and misused saying, 'Christianity is Platonism for the 'people,'' almost every one of the nine parts of the book contains lines that have entered the repertoire of educated or polemical discourse: 'life as such is will to power' ( ); 'humans are the still undetermined [ nicht festgestellte ] animals '( ); 'When a woman has scholarly inclinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexuality' ( ); ' Morality in Europe these days is the morality of herd animals '( ); and (slightly paraphrased here): 'saintliness - the highest spiritualization of the instinct of cleanliness' ( ).


These proverbs are in a way the least of what BGE has to offer. Its primary fascination lies on a deeper level: this book introduces us into a world of remarkable conjectures, suspicions, and implications. Though one might say this is true of most of Nietzsche's other published works as well, with the exception of Zarathustra , there is nevertheless a difference See, e.g., M. Tanner, Introduction to BGE and Nietzsche ,p. . Ecce Homo ,' Beyond Good and Evil ', , translation Kaufmann, p. . xv


in emphasis between BGE and the other writings. Whereas the other texts pursue their subjects from many different angles, BGE (like The Genealogy of Morals , which Nietzsche announced on the back of its title page as 'a sequel to my last book, Beyond Good and Evil , which it is meant to supplement and clarify') is highly focused on the psychological aspects of its topics. In BGE Nietzsche confronts us primarily (though not exclusively) with a dimension of his thought that he was particularly proud of - his psychological stance. This integration of what he calls a psychological point of view into his general practice of casting doubts on received convictions by tracing their origins, of throwing into question our most fundamental beliefs by pointing out their shakiness, and of scrutinizing available alternatives in the light of a new vision of the value of life - this I take to be the most distinctive feature of BGE . Nietzsche himself gives the following account of what he is doing in BGE : 'This book ( ) is in every essential a critique of modernity ; modern sciences, modern arts, even modern politics are not excluded. Besides this, it is an indication of an opposing type, which is as un-modern as possible, a noble, yes-saying type.' Thoughthis characterization is accurate and confirms the view that Nietzsche considers his task to be mainly a critical one, it is by no means complete. Interestingly enough, it does not mention two topics which some readers take to be the subject of the most disturbing reflections in the book: morality and religion. This is surprising because these are the topics which seem to emerge most strongly in any consideration of its main message.


In order to appreciate the distinctive approach which Nietzsche favors in BGE in his dealings with what he calls 'modernity,' it might be worthwhiletosayafewwordsabouthismoregeneraloutlook.Thestartingpoint for almost everything Nietzsche is interested in throughout his entire intellectual career can be nicely summarized in the form of the question 'how are we to live?' or, more poignantly, 'how are we to endure life?' He considered this question to be of the utmost importance, because of three interconnected convictions that he treated virtually as facts. His first conviction was that life is best conceived of as a chaotic dynamic process without any stability or direction. The second is articulated in the claim that we have no reason whatsoever to believe in any such thing as the 'sense' or the 'value' of life, insofar as these terms imply the idea Ibid . xvi of an 'objective' or 'natural' purpose of life. The third is that human life is value-oriented in its very essence - that is, without adherence to some set of values or other, human life would be virtually impossible. Whereas the first conviction is supposed to state an ontological fact, the second is meant to be an application of the ontological point to the normative aspects of human life in particular. The third conviction, though somewhat at odds with the other two, is taken by Nietzsche to reveal a psychological necessity. (How Nietzsche came to hold these convictions, and whether they can be supported, there is not space to examine here, although a closer look would no doubt lead back to his use of some of Schopenhauer's ideas and to his picture of what constituted the cultural life of pre-Socratic ancient Greece.)


Against the background of these convictions, Nietzsche became interested in the question of the origin of values, a question that eventually led him to a whole array of unorthodox and original answers. All his answers ultimately follow from a pattern of reasoning which in its most basic structure is quite simple and straightforward: if there are no values 'out there,' in the sense in which we believe stars and other physical objects to be 'out there' and if, at the same time, we cannot do without values, then there must be some value-creating capacity within ourselves which is responsible for the values we cherish and which organizes our lives. Though presumably we are all endowed with this capacity, there are very few of us who manage to create values powerful enough to force people into acceptance and to constitute cultural and social profiles. To create such constitutive values seems to be, according to Nietzsche, the prerogative of real philosophers (not philosophy professors), of unique artists (if there are any), of even rarer founders of religions, and, above all, of institutions that develop out of the teaching of creative individuals, i.e., of science, philosophy, and theology. Thus, anyone interested in the function and the origin of values should scrutinize the processes which enabled these persons and institutions to create values. At this point Nietzsche's more detailed investigations tend to start spreading out in a remarkable number of different directions. It is here, too, that in one sense we should take BGE to have its point of departure. That the detailed analysis of all the phenomena connected with the For, after all, there seems to be no reason to think that Nietzsche would not allow in principle that each of us could be transformed into a 'free spirit,' i.e., a person who has the capacity and strength to create and stick to the 'right' values. xvii


concept of value is a very tricky task methodologically is documented not only in BGE but also in almost all of Nietzsche's other writings. Acknowledging the fact that the different features of the value-creating processes are much too complex to be accessible by means of a single explanatory scheme, Nietzsche tentatively pursues several different approaches. He merges psychological hypotheses with causal explanations, and combines them with historical observations and linguistic considerations into a multi-perspectival technique that he fondly refers to as his 'genealogical method.' In BGE , where he is occupied mainly with the psychological dimension of the process of value formation, he applies this method primarily in an attempt to come to an understanding of those aspects of the value problem that pertain to its normative elements, that is, to the question of good and bad. At the risk of oversimplification one can say the bulk of this work addresses three topics, each one of which can be expressed best in terms of a question. The first is this: why is it impossible for us to live without values, why do we need values at all, or, more in line with Nietzsche's terminology, what is the value of values? The second is this: how does it happen that the values we and the overwhelming majority of the members of our culture subscribe to have either been bad from the beginning or have degenerated into bad values? The third topic is this: what is the right perspective on values; what should we expect values to be? Though these three questions are in a certain sense perennial, Nietzsche relates them directly to what he saw as the manifest historical situation of his age and the prevailing conditions of the cultural tradition he lived in, so much of what he has to say is deeply rooted in his response to late nineteenth-century central European conceptions. This is something we should never forget when we confront his texts. Nietzsche speaks to us from the past, and this fact alone might account for some features of his writing that we would now consider idiosyncratic - for example, his way of talking about women and about national characteristics. IV At this point we face a problem that I take to be crucial for any adequate assessment of Nietzsche's project. It concerns the manner in which we are to comprehend his approach to the topics under examination. Now that we have identified a number of central questions that he discusses in xviii


BGE, it is tempting to proceed in the way normally used in dealing with philosophical texts: stating the questions addressed, and then trying to line up the arguments that the advocate of a position puts forward in favor of the answers he comes up with. However, in the case of Nietzsche and BGE it is by no means evident that such a procedure would capture what Nietzsche is doing and what BGE is all about. There are few arguments to be found in BGE, and those which can be extracted are seldom of the most convincing kind. Following the normal procedure would also encourage the illusion that Nietzsche designed BGE to be understood simply in terms of arguments, whether good or bad, and I cannot find anything in BGE which would encourage such an illusion. There is considerable evidence that we should try a different approach, andthecluelies in Nietzsche's numerous allusions to the practices of what he calls the 'new philosophers.' To be the type of philosopher Nietzsche valuesis to follow hunches, to think at a 'presto' pace ( ), to embark on experiments both intellectual and existential ( , ), to transform andto create values ( , ), to put forward hypotheses that are risky: in short, to be interested in what he calls 'dangerous perhapses' ( ). One would not expect a person with this conception of philosophy to hold the idea that what counts most in the endeavor to reach highly unorthodox and sometimes even shocking insights is to be in possession of a 'good argument,'andthatonecouldorshouldpresentone'sviewsincompliance with this idea. Rather, one would expect such a person to pursue a very different path in expressing his views, which would involve starting with a bold claim or striking observation and then using it in a variety of different ways. It might form the basis for an analysis of something in terms of that claim or observation, or it might point to a symptom, presupposition, or consequence of a very general or a very particular state of affairs. It even might be related tentatively to topics which at first sight have nothing


There are passages that make it very hard to believe in this illusion. See, e.g., remarks in that the activity of reason-giving is a post hoc affair intended to justify 'some fervent wish that they have sifted through and made properly abstract,' or (in the same section) his making fun of Spinoza's mos geometricus as a masquerade. In my eyes, the most striking passage for discouraging this illusion is to be found in , where Nietzsche talks about what he calls philosophical states or moods. Here he compares the 'right' way of doing philosophy with the 'normal' attitude and writes concerning the latter: 'You ['normal' philosophers] imagine every necessity is a need, a painful having to follow and being compelled.' This 'having to follow' and 'being compelled' I read as a reference to the procedure of establishing results via sound arguments. Nietzsche uses the German word Versuch (attempt, experiment) in a broad way which makes that term cover the connotations of Versuchung (temptation) and Versucher (tempter) as well. Cf. . xix to do with what the original claim or the first observation was about. In short, one could envision a philosopher under the spell of Nietzschean 'new philosophy' as someone whose methodology is deeply entangled in and in thrall to what could be called 'what if ' scenarios. If this is how a 'new philosopher' approaches problems, it seems beside the point to treat Nietzsche's proclaimed insights as based on arguments. Theconcept of a 'result' or a 'solution' also becomes obsolete, since this type of philosophy is obviously not oriented towards results and solutions understood in the sense of statements which can be defended against thorough critical resistance. Its aim consists instead in the uncovering of surprising possibilities and the playful presentation of innovative perspectives that do not aspire to the status of rock-hard 'truths' but are meant to be offerings or propositions for a like-minded spirit.


Nietzscheobviouslyintended BGE toexemplifyasclearlyaspossibleall thecharacteristics he attributes to the style, the method, and the intentions of the 'new philosophers' - and yet it is remarkable how often this fact is not sufficiently acknowledged by his interpreters. This oversight is remarkable not only because it seems to be in part responsible for awkward attempts to integrate Nietzsche's intellectual products into traditional academicphilosophy, butaboveallbecauseittendstomisswhatmightbe called, for want of a better term, the 'socio-hermeneutical' dimension of what has become known as his doctrine of 'perspectivism.' This doctrine It should go without saying that this imagined scenario does not exclude 'good arguments.' Rather, the scenario is meant to show that if one deals with topics in the way outlined above, the guiding intention is not to give or to find 'good arguments.' In Nietzsche's terminology, this amounts to the claim that a 'good argument' is not an overriding methodological 'value.' Invoking his polemical inventory, one could say, in his spirit: to be obsessed by 'the will to a good argument' indicates bad taste. Again, this characterization is not meant to suggest that what these 'new philosophers' are proclaiming is something they are not serious about or do not want us to take seriously. It is only meant to emphasize that what they put forward is connected very intimately with their personal point of view, and hence it is nothing that they can force on someone if there is no shared basis of experience, of resentment ( ressentiment ), or suffering. See BGE , where Nietzsche expresses this point in an especially belligerent fashion.


These attempts do not necessarily result in uninformative or misleading accounts of aspects of Nietzsche's thought. On the contrary, many of them shed considerable light on the historical background of his ideas and on the impact they could have on various discussions that happen to take place within the framework of academic philosophy. They are, however, operating under the unavoidable (and, perhaps, reasonable) restrictions of that framework. This puts them in the position of having to abstract from the personal or 'perspectival' features essential to Nietzsche's conceptions. That there is a price to be paid for this 'academization' is obvious. It is revealed in the difference between the excitement and fun that one can have in reading Nietzsche and the boredom that one sometimes experiences when reading the literature on him. xx in its most trivial reading amounts to the claim that our view of the world and, consequently, the statements we take to be true, depend on our situation, on our 'perspective' on the world. Perspectivism thus understood gives rise to the epistemological thesis that our knowledge claims can never be true in an absolute or an objective sense, partly because of the necessary spatial and temporal differences between the viewpoints that each knower is bound to occupy when relating to an object, and also because of the fact that we can never be certain that what appears to us to be the case really is the case. Though it is true that in some of his more conventional moods Nietzsche seems to have thought about perspectivism along these lines, this reading gives no hint whatsoever of why he should have been attracted to such a doctrine in his more inspired moments. In this epistemological version the doctrine is neither original nor interesting, but merely a version of skeptical or idealist claims that used to be connected in popular writings with names like Berkeley and Kant.


However, perspectivism takes on a much more promising dimension if it is put into the broader context of the problem of justifying or at least of making plausible an insistence on integrating a personal or subjective element into the expression of one's views as a condition of their making sense at all. By looking at this doctrine in this context, we can appreciate it as stating conditions for understanding an expression that purports to express something true, be it a text, a statement, or a confession. These conditions can be summarized in terms of two essential convictions. ( ) In order to understand a claim for truth embodied in an expression, one has to have an understanding of the situation from which that claim originates, and this presupposes being acquainted with and involved in the personal attitudes, subjective experiences, and private evaluations which form the basis of the view expressed. ( )Inorder Here I have to confess that this sketch of the epistemological interpretation of Nietzsche's perspectivism may not be the most sympathetic one, and no doubt one can find in the literature much more sophisticated versions of this doctrine. However, this does not affect the main point I want to make, which consists in the claim that the epistemological reading misses the central feature of Nietzsche's doctrine. There are some other misgivings concerning the reading that deserve mention. The first consists in the fact that Nietzsche - especially in BGE - is not in sympathy with skepticism (see ). Hence, why should he be interested in putting forward a doctrine containing skeptical implications? A further reservation about the feasibility of the epistemological reading can be seen in the annoying consequence of having to credit Nietzsche with all sorts of paradoxical and self-refuting claims such as 'If perspectivism is true we cannot know it to be true.' It should be noted that the 'German form of skepticism' discussed approvingly in has nothing to do with epistemological skepticism. xxi Introduction to judge the correctness, or perhaps merely the plausibility, of such a claim, one has to have an experiential or existential background similar to that of the person who made the claim. It is because of this insistence on integrating subjective aspects into the process of understanding, and because of the idea that judging the truth of a view presupposes shared experiences, that I call this the 'socio-hermeneutical' reading of perspectivism.


If perspectivism is understood in these terms, then much of what is going on in BGE and other texts by Nietzsche begins to look considerably less arbitrary and idiosyncratic than has been claimed. For example, his so-called 'theory of truth' which he alludes to quite often in the first two books of BGE , seems less absurd than many commentators have taken it to be. According to these critics Nietzsche's perspectival conception of truth endorses the following three statements: ( ) there is no absolute or objective truth; ( ) what is taken to be truth is nothing but a fiction, that is, a perspectival counterfeit or forgery ( Falschung ) of what really is the case; and ( ) claims ( ) and ( ) are true. These three statements together seem to imply the paradoxical claim that it is true that there is no truth. So the critic argues. However, when read in the light of the preceding remarks a much less extravagant interpretation of Nietzsche's theory of truth suggests itself which is completely independent of the issue of whether he really subscribes to these three statements. On this interpretation, Nietzsche's theory claims only ( ) that there are no context-free truths, where a context is to be defined as the set of subjective conditions that the utterer of a truth is governed by and that anyone who wishes correctly to judge it is able to apprehend. It also claims ( ) that as an utterer or judger of a truth we are never in a position to be familiar with a context in its entirety, that is, with all the conditions that define it, and therefore we have to settle for an incomplete version of a context where the degree of incompleteness depends on differences between our capacities to understand ourselves and others. From this it follows ( ) that, given our situation, every truth is defined by this necessarily That there are many epistemological and logical problems connected with holding such a paradoxical claim is not difficult to point out. The most comprehensive discussion of these problems with reference to Nietzsche that I know of is by M. Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, ). Put a bit more bluntly, this claim amounts to the assertion that the concept 'objective or absolute truth' is an empty concept when understood in contraposition to 'perspectival truth.' xxii


incomplete context. Thus every truth is a partial truth or a perspectival fiction. This 'socio-hermeneutical' reading of perspectivism points to a more commonsensical understanding of Nietzsche's claims regarding truth. It also suggests that some of the stylistic peculiarities of BGE and other texts had a methodological function. BGE , like most of Nietzsche's other texts, has an aphoristic form. It looks like a collection of impromptu remarks, each of which explores to a different degree of depth some aspect or other of a particular observation, specific claim, or surprising phenomenon. These remarks are numbered and loosely organized into topic-related groups, each one of which carries a short descriptive phrase that functions as its title. The impression is of an apparently arbitrary compilation of notes which are actually presented in an artful, though idiosyncratic way. Thus it has been maintained that we should approach BGE as we would a work of literature rather than strictly in terms of philosophical text. Thoughthisimpressionisbynomeansmisleading,itfailstobesensitiveto the intentions guiding the architectonic of this text. If a claim is fully comprehensible only when placed in its appropriate subjective and existential context, then it is incumbent on an author to convey as much information about this context as possible. One way of doing this consists in presenting a whole array of thoughts which are designed primarily to inform us about the various subjective stances characteristic of the individual making the claim. The resulting collection may seem random because it can include almost any conceivable digression under the pretense of being informative about the subjective context. However, if the socio-hermeneutical interpretation is correct, the seeming randomness of Nietzsche's aphorisms can equally well be taken as a calculated and methodologically appropriate consequence of his perspectivism. In Nietzsche's writings, as in life, randomness can turn out to be an applied method in disguise.


It should be noticed that this reading is compatible with some of the most disturbing features of Nietzsche's talk about truth. It allows us to make sense of his insistence that there are degrees of truth, which is exhibited most clearly in BGE in his reflection on how much 'truth' one can take ( ). It also makes understandable the idea, very important to him, that truth is just a special case of error. And it allows for the use of personal pronouns in connection with truth, a habit Nietzsche is very fond of (cf. , , ). Though there is some question as to the applicability of terms such as 'aphorism' or 'aphoristic form'toNietzsche's texts, he himself does not seem to have problems with such a characterization. His own use of these terms in reference to his writings is documented in On the Genealogy of Morals , Preface ( KSA V, p. )and ( KSA V, p. )andin Twilight of Idols , , ( KSA VI, p. ). xxiii Introduction V BGE deals with questions of how values arise psychologically and how we should evaluate them. It discusses the origin and the meaning of philosophical values such as truth, the religious practice of establishing and enforcing specific values such as faith, piety, and love of man, and the motives and mechanisms involved in our cultivation of moral values such as pity, fairness, and willingness to help each other. It also treats such political and social values as democracy, equality, and progress, seeing them as means of oppression and as indicators of decay and degeneration. Most of this is done with the aim of finding out what brought about the modern way of life, and what made modern culture such a doomed enterprise. The general tendency of the book is to claim that at the base of the most deeply habitualized normative evaluations that modern people take for granted, their most fundamental judgments about what has to be considered 'good' or 'bad' in almost every sphere of human activity, there ultimately lies a mixture of appalling character traits, ranging from weakness and fear to wishful thinking and self-betrayal, and all these find their symptomatic expression in the modern condition.


Neither this critical message nor the material Nietzsche relies upon in order to substantiate his assessment of modernity is peculiar to BGE .In almost all his other writings, he discusses the shortcomings of philosophy, the dangers of religion, the built-in biases of science, and the damaging consequences of institutionalized moral and cultural values, and he arrives at similar bleak conclusions. Thus, the message of BGE is just another version of Nietzsche's general project. However, BGE is distinctive not only in its emphasis on a psychological explanation of the rise to dominanceofspecificvalues, but also in two further respects. The first relates to the doctrine of the 'will to power,' the second to his views on what might becalled'good'or'adequate'waysofconfrontingreality.Bothtopicsbelong to his relatively rare excursions into the world of 'positive' thinking. Obviously this overlap is intended by Nietzsche. It seems to be an architectonic device, for he frequentlyquotesfromandalludestohisothertexts.Thebestexampleofthispracticeistobefound rightatthebeginning( )of BGE wherehecitesalmostverbatimfromthebeginningof Human,All Too Human . This quotation refers to his diagnosis of the most fundamental mistake of traditional metaphysicians, i.e., their conception of the origin of oppositions. Cf. B. Glatzeder: 'Perspektiven der W unschbarkeit'. Nietzsches Metaphysikkritik in Menschliches Allzumenschliches (Philo Verlag: Berlin, ). In quoting this appraisal, which forms the basis of his far reaching criticism of metaphysics and its notion of 'objective' truth, he can treat it like a result whose justification is already given elsewhere. xxiv


The 'will to power' makes its first public appearance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra . There it is introduced as one of the three major teachings Zarathustra has to offer, the other two being his advocacy of the overman ( Ubermensch ) and the conception of the Eternal Recurrence. It is somewhat surprising that in Zarathustra Nietzsche has little to say about what the 'will to power' means. Fortunately he is a bit more explicit in BGE , although here too the doctrine receives what is by no means an exhaustive treatment. There is, however, some evidence that he wants us to think of this doctrine as advancing or at least implying an ontological hypothesis. Focusing on the hints he gives in BGE , the following picture emerges: if we look at the phenomenon of organic life as an integral part of reality, we find that it consists not in a static condition but in a dynamic and chaotic process of creation and decay, of overpowering and becoming overpowered, of suppressing and being suppressed. This suggests that what governs these processes is some sort of power struggle where every single form of life has a tendency to overpower every other form. However, to think of life in this way we have to assume that each living particle is endowed with a certain amount of power that it has a will to realize. This amount is supposed to define its 'will to power' and thus is ultimately decisive for its ability to develop itself and to survive, or, to use a famous Nietzschean phrase, for its potential to become what it is. It is this line of thought which led Nietzsche to the assertion that life is 'will to power' ( , ). But this is merely one part of the story. In BGE Nietzsche tentatively tries to pursue the conception of a 'will to power' in a further direction. He aims at a broader application of the conception by transforming it from a principle of organic life into a much broader axiom pertaining to the essence of nature in general. It is here that it acquires an ontological meaning. The main motive for his attempt to conceive of the 'will to power' as a general ontological principle seems to be that there is no


It is because of the relatively superficial and vague treatment of this doctrine in his published writings that many interpretations of the meaning and function of 'will to power' rely heavily on Nietzsche's Nachlass , the voluminous collection of his unpublished notes. However, though the Nachlass indeed contains a considerable amount of material pertaining to that conception, it has the disadvantage of giving support to widely divergent, if not contradictory, interpretations. This is due to the fact that Nietzsche seems to have been experimenting with different meanings of this concept without reaching a definite position. To appreciate the whole range of readings possible see, for example, G. Abel, Nietzsche: Die Dynamik der Willen zur Macht und die ewige Wiederkehr (de Gruyter: Berlin, , nd edn), and V. Gerhardt, Vom Willen zur Macht: Anthropologie und Metaphysik der Macht am exemplarischen Fall Friedrich Nietzsches (de Gruyter: Berlin, ). xxv Introduction reason to restrict the explanatory force of that concept to organic life. Why not think of inorganic matter, of the material world, in terms of 'will to power' as well? Matter would then have to be conceived as 'will to power' paralyzed, as 'will to power' in a state of potentiality. According to Nietzsche this view would allow for a unified account of the world in its totality: 'The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its 'intelligible character' - would be just this will to power and nothing else' ( ). This view would also have the advantage of overcoming the basic bias of traditional metaphysics that there is a difference in kind between being and becoming, because it implies that being static and stable is in the end nothing but a degenerative form of becoming, or nothing but an unactualized power process. It goes without saying that Nietzsche is very much in favor of this claim.


Evenif it is conceded that Nietzsche never really elaborated his concept of the 'will to power' sufficiently, it does not appear to be one of his more attractive ideas. The reason for this is that it purports to give us insight into the essence of nature, what nature is 'in itself,' but this does not square well with his emphatic criticism, put forward in BGE and elsewhere, of the very notion of an 'in itself.' According to Nietzsche there is no 'in itself,' no essence, no fixed nature of things, and all beliefs to the contrary are founded on deep and far-reaching metaphysical illusions. It seems therefore that one cannot avoid the unsettling conclusion that the doctrine of a 'will to power' shares all the vices which Nietzsche attributes to metaphysical thinking in general. Thereare no such untoward consequences of the second piece of 'positive' thinking in BGE , but this is because it scarcely qualifies as thinking at all, consisting instead of fantasies about what the ideal conditions would be for a person to be able to participate in productive thinking. Here productive thinking seems to mean the capacity to live up to the task of enduring an unbiased assessment of reality. Nietzsche summarizes these fantasies in the picture he gives of the 'new philosophers' and in remarks on what it means to be noble. Nobility, for him, has to do with putting oneself at a distance from people and things. It is rooted in and is the product of the 'pathos of distance,' to use his influential formula ( ). This pathos has to be conceived as the socially inherited ability ( ) to have a sense for differences in rank between persons, ( ) to accept these differences as pointing to differences in distinction (defined as a positive quality of worthiness), and ( ) to strive for higher distinction. A person possessing xxvi


this ability is able to strive for unique states of awareness: 'Without the pathos of distance ... that other more mysterious pathos could not have grown at all, that demand for new expansions of distance within the soul itself, the development of states that are increasingly high, rare, distant, tautly drawn and comprehensive, and, in short, the enhancement of the type 'man,' the constant 'self-overcoming of man' (to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense)' ( ). The ability to achieve such states seems to function as a condition of gaining important insights and having thepsychologicalresourcesneededtolivewiththem,anditindicatesacertain stance towards reality superior to 'normal' or 'common' attitudes (cf. ). With this plea for nobility Nietzsche states again his conviction that what ultimately counts in our epistemic dealings with reality is not knowledge per se , that is, knowledge detached from the knower. What deserves the title of knowledge has to be intimately connected with the special and unique situation a knowing subject is in. This is so not only because according to Nietzsche knowledge is not an 'objective' or impersonal affair, something one can have like a detached thing that one possesses, but above all because the knowing subject has to live his knowledge. The extent to which a subject can do this depends on personal constitution, character traits, and intellectual robustness. Knowledge thus becomes associated with the question of how much truth one can endure (cf. ). It is in this context that the concept of nobility reveals itself to be part of a 'positive' teaching: nobility that is the product of the social pathos of distance increases the potential of a subject for enduring 'uncommon' knowledge because it promotes more comprehensive states, and these in turn indicate a growing strength in the subject's character that enables it to cope with more of 'the truth.' This at least seems to be Nietzsche's message.


Whatisitthatmakesreading BGE andotherwritingsof Nietzschesuch an attractive and stimulating experience? The main reason, I believe, has little to do with the plausibility, let alone the correctness, of his views. On the contrary, we like many of his ideas precisely because of their pointed one-sidedness, their extravagance, and their eccentricity. Nor, I suspect, are we now especially preoccupied with the topics which he obviously took to be decisive for an evaluation of our way of living under modern conditions. Many of his themes we now consider rather obsolete, and to some of them we no longer have any immediate access because they xxvii are deeply rooted in their nineteenth-century contexts. The fascination his works still have must therefore originate from somewhere else. If one wants to account for the appeal of his writings, it is perhaps advisable not to look too closely at his actual teachings, but to think of his texts as a kind of mental tonic designed to encourage his readers to continue to confront their doubts and suspicions about the well-foundedness of many of their most fundamental ideas about themselves and their world. This wouldsuggestthatNietzsche's works may still be captivating because they confront a concern that is not restricted to modern times. They address our uncomfortable feeling that our awareness of ourselves and of the world depends on conceptions that we ultimately do not understand. We conceive of ourselves as subjects trying to live a decent life, guided in our doings by aims that fit the normal expectations of our social and cultural environment; we believe certain things to be true beyond any doubt, and we hold others and ourselves to many moral obligations. Although all this is constitutive of a normal way of life, we have only a vague idea of why we have to deal with things in this way; we do not really know what in the end justifies these practices. In questioning not the normality but the objectivity or truth of such a normal world view, Nietzsche's writings can have the effect of making us feel less worried about our inability to account for some of our central convictions in an 'absolute' way. It is up to each of us to decide whether to be grateful for this reminder or to loathe it. Rolf-Peter Horstmann xxviii


, 1 = Born in Rocken, a small village in the Prussian province of Saxony, on October.. , 1 = Birth of his sister Elisabeth.. , 1 = Birth of his brother Joseph.. , 1 = 'softening of the brain.' Brother dies; family moves to Naumburg to live with father's. , 1 = mother and her sisters.. , 1 = Begins studies at Pforta, Germany's most famous school for education in the classics.. , 1 = Graduates from Pforta with a thesis in Latin on the Greek poet Theogonis; enters the University of Bonn as a theology student. Transfers from Bonn, following the classical philologist. , 1 = Friedrich Ritschl to Leipzig where he registers as a philology student; reads Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation . Reads Friedrich Lange's History of Materialism .. , 1 = . , 1 = Meets Richard Wagner.. , 1 = OnRitschl's recommendation is appointed professor of classical philology at Basle at the age of twenty-four before completing his doctorate (which is then conferred without a dissertation);. , 1 = begins frequent visits to the Wagner residence at Tribschen.. , 1 = Serves as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war; contracts a serious illness and so serves only two months. Writes 'The Dionysiac World View.' xxix


, Chronology = Publishes his first book, The Birth of Tragedy ; its dedicatory preface to Richard Wagner claims for art the role of 'the highest task and truly metaphysical activity of this life'; devastating reviews follow. Publishes 'David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer,' the first of his Untimely Meditations ; begins taking books on natural science out of the Basle library, whereas he had previously. , Chronology = confinedhimselflargelytobooksonphilologicalmatters.Writes 'On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.' Publishes two more Meditations , 'The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life' and 'Schopenhauer as Educator.'. , Chronology = . , Chronology = Publishes the fourth Meditation , 'Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,' which already bears subtle signs of his movement away from Wagner.. , Chronology = Publishes Human, All Too Human (dedicated to the memory of Voltaire); it praises science over art as the mark of high culture and thus marks a decisive turn away from Wagner.. , Chronology = Terrible health problems force him to resign his chair at Basle (with a small pension); publishes 'Assorted Opinions and Maxims,' the first part of vol. II of Human, All Too Human ; begins living alone in Swiss and Italian boarding-houses.. , Chronology = Publishes 'The Wanderer and His Shadow,' which becomes the second part of vol. II of Human, All Too Human .. , Chronology = Publishes Daybreak .. , Chronology = Publishes Idylls of Messina (eight poems)inamonthlymagazine; publishes The Gay Science ; friendship with Paul Ree and. , Chronology = Publishes the first two parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra ; learns of Wagner's death just after mailing part one to the publisher. Publishes the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra .. , Chronology = . , Chronology = Publishes the fourth part of Zarathustra for private circulation only.. , Chronology = Publishes BeyondGoodandEvil ; writes prefaces for new releases of: The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human , vols. I and II, and Daybreak . xxx


, 1 = Publishes expanded edition of The Gay Science with a new preface, a fifth part, and an appendix of poems; publishes Hymn to Life , a musical work for chorus and orchestra; publishes On the Genealogy of Morality . Publishes The Case of Wagner , composes a collection of poems, Dionysian Dithyrambs , and four short books: Twilight of Idols ,. , 1 = The Antichrist , Ecce Homo , and Nietzsche contra Wagner . Collapses physically and mentally in Turin on January; writes. , 1 = a few lucid notes but never recovers sanity; is briefly institutionalized; spends remainder of his life as an invalid, living with his mother and then his sister, who also gains control of his literary estate. Dies in Weimar on August. xxxi


There is a good deal of material in Nietzsche's unpublished notes that makes interesting supplementary reading for the study of BGE . It can be found in vols. VII/ and VII/ of Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe , ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari (de Gruyter: Berlin, ). Also very useful is vol. XIV of Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe , ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari (de Gruyter: Berlin and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag: Munich, ), pp. - , which contains earlier and often much more extensive versions of many of the aphorisms collected in BGE . This material is not yet available in the Kritische Gesamtausgabe . Nietzsche's own assessment of the aims and merits of BGE can be found in his late autobiographical work Ecce Homo , written in and published in . The literature on Nietzsche is immense, though there are almost no books and very few articles dealing directly and exclusively with BGE . Titles worth mentioning would be: A. Nehemas, 'Will to Knowledge, Will to Ignorance, and Will to Power in 'Beyond Good and Evil,'' in Y. Yovel, ed., Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker (Reidel Publishing Company: Dordrecht, Boston, and Lancaster, ), pp. - ;P.J.van Tongeren, Die Moral von Nietzsche's Moralkritik. Beitrag zu einem Kommentar von Nietzsches 'Jenseits von Gut und Bose ' (Bouvier Verlag: Bonn, ); and D. B. Allison, 'A Diet of Worms: Aposiopetic Rhetoric in 'Beyond Good and Evil,'' Nietzsche Studien ( ), pp. - . Some people might find it rewarding to approach Nietzsche's thought before reading about its biographical background. There are quite a number of interesting and well-researched (German) biographies, of which the best known are C. P. Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie , vols. (Hanser Verlag: Munich, - ), W. Ross, Der angstliche Adler xxxii Further reading


(Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt: Stuttgart, ), and R. Safranski, Nietzsche. Biographie seines Denkens (Hanser Verlag: Munich, ). All of these works discuss aspects of BGE as well. Nietzsche, his themes, and his topics have been subject to some very different interpretations, depending on the philosophical tradition in which the interpreter is located. This has led to quite interesting 'regional' schools of interpretation, especially with respect to the will-to-power doctrine and to Nietzsche's epistemological views, topics which surface prominentlyin BGE . These schools are best characterized in geographical terms as 'German,' 'French,' and 'Anglo-American.' The best-known and most influential representative of the 'German,' metaphysically oriented school is Martin Heidegger, whose two-volume study Nietzsche (Neske: Pfullingen, ; English translation: Harper and Row: New York, ) had an enormous impact on the discussion about Nietzsche and his role in the history of metaphysics, at least in parts of Europe. The 'French' school, which tends to be more interested in the destructive or 'deconstructive' motives in Nietzsche's thought, is impressively represented in the works of Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie (Presses Universitaires de France: Paris, ), and Nietzsche (Presses Universitaires de France: Paris, ), P. Klossovski, Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux (Mercure de France: Paris, ), and S. Kofman, Nietzsche et la metaphore (Editions Payot: Paris, ). Their books have led to lively controversies not only about specific Nietzschean views but also about how to read Nietzsche at all. The 'Anglo-American' school seems to be mainly interested in integrating Nietzsche into the gallery of 'serious' thinkers, committed to what their emissaries take to be the normal standards of rationality. Convincing examples of this approach are A. Nehemas, Nietzsche:LifeasLiterature (HarvardUniversityPress:Cambridge, ), and M. Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, ). All of these schools and all the books mentioned have interesting things to say on many aspects of Nietzsche's views that are expressed in BGE . xxxiii


The translation follows the German text as printed in the critical edition of Nietzsche's works edited by G. Colli and M. Montinari (de Gruyter: Berlin, -). The footnotes are not meant to provide a commentary to Nietzsche's text. They are restricted to ( ) translations of phrases and terms from foreign languages, ( ) explanations of peculiarities of Nietzsche's German terminology, and ( ) some comments on material used or alluded to by Nietzsche. The glossary of names on pp. - contains short descriptions of all persons mentioned in the text. The notes and the glossary make use of information supplied by vols. XIV and XV of Samtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe , ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari, vols. (de Gruyter: Berlin and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag: Munich, ). They are the joint product of Dina Emundts, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, and Judith Norman. Thetranslator would like to thank all the people whose advice and suggestions have helped with the project. In particular, Alistair Welchman, Thomas Sebastian, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, and Karl Ameriks have provided considerable assistance with the translation, and Richard, Caroline, and Sara Norman, and Alistair Welchman have given invaluable encouragement and support. Their contribution to the project is gratefully acknowledged. xxxiv Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future


Suppose that truth is a woman - and why not? Aren't there reasons for suspecting that all philosophers, to the extent that they have been dogmatists, have not really understood women? That the grotesque seriousness of their approach towards the truth and the clumsy advances they have madesofar are unsuitable ways of pressing their suit with a woman? What is certain is that she has spurned them - leaving dogmatism of all types standing sad and discouraged. If it is even left standing! Because there are those who make fun of dogmatism, claiming that it has fallen over, that it is lying flat on its face, or more, that dogmatism is in its last gasps. But seriously, there are good reasons for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy was just noble (though childish) ambling and preambling, however solemn, settled and decisive it might have seemed. And perhaps the time is very near when we will realize again and again just what actually served as the cornerstone of those sublime and unconditional philosophical edifices that the dogmatists used to build - some piece of folk superstition from time immemorial (like the soul-superstition that still causes trouble as the superstition of the subject or I), some word-play perhaps, a seduction of grammar or an over-eager generalization from facts that are really very local, very personal, very human-all-too-human. Let us hope that the dogmatists' philosophy was only a promise over the millennia, as was the case even earlier with astrology, in whose service perhaps more labor, money, ingenuity, and patience was expended than for any real science so far. We owe the great style of architecture in Asia and Egypt to astrology and its 'supernatural' claims. It seems that all great things, in order to inscribe eternal demands in the heart of humanity, must first wander the earth under monstrous and terrifying masks; dogmatic philosophy Beyond Good and Evil


was this sort of a mask: the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, for example, or Platonism in Europe. We should not be ungrateful towards dogmatism, but it must nonetheless be said that the worst, most prolonged, and most dangerous of all errors to this day was a dogmatist's error, namely Plato's invention of pure spirit and the Good in itself. But now that it has been overcome, and Europe breathes a sigh of relief after this nightmare, and at least can enjoy a healthier - well - sleep, we, whose task is wakefulness itself , are the heirs to all the force cultivated through the struggle against this error. Of course: talking about spirit and the Good like Plato did meant standing truth on its head and disowning even perspectivism , which is the fundamental condition of all life. In fact, as physicians we could ask: 'How could such a disease infect Plato, the most beautiful outgrowth of antiquity? Did the evil Socrates corrupt him after all? was Socrates in fact the corrupter of youth? did he deserve his hemlock?' - But the struggle against Plato, or, to use a clear and 'popular' idiom, the struggle against the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millennia - since Christianity is Platonism for the 'people' - has created a magnificent tension of spirit in Europe, the likes of which the earth has never known: with such a tension in our bow we can now shoot at the furthest goals. Granted, the European experiences this tension as a crisis or state of need; and twice already there have been attempts, in a grand fashion, to unbend the bow, once through Jesuitism, and the second time through the democratic Enlightenment: - which, with the help of freedom of the press and circulation of newspapers, might really insure that spirit does not experience itself so readily as 'need'! (Germans invented gunpowder - all honors due! But they made up for it - they invented the press.) But we, who are neither Jesuits nor democrats, nor even German enough, we good Europeans and free, very free spirits - we still have it, the whole need of spirit and the whole tension of its bow! And perhaps the arrow too, the task, and - who knows? the goal ... Sils-Maria , Upper Engadine, June,


Thewilltotruth that still seduces us into taking so many risks, this famous truthfulness that all philosophers so far have talked about with veneration: what questions this will to truth has already laid before us! What strange, terrible, questionable questions! That is already a long story - and yet it seems to have hardly begun? Is it any wonder if we finally become suspicious, lose patience, turn impatiently away? That we ourselves are also learning from this Sphinx to pose questions? Who is it really that questions us here? What in us really wills the truth? In fact, we paused for a long time before the question of the cause of this will - until we finally came to a complete standstill in front of an even more fundamental question. We asked about the value of this will. Granted, we will truth: why not untruth instead? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth came before us, - or was it we who came before the problem? Which of us is Oedipus? Which one is the Sphinx? It seems we have a rendezvous of questions and question-marks. - And, believe it or not, it ultimately looks to us as if the problem has never been raised until now, - as if we were the first to ever see it, fix our gaze on it, risk it . Because this involves risk and perhaps no risk has ever been greater. 'How could anything originate out of its opposite? Truth from error, for instance? Or the will to truth from the will to deception? Or selfless action from self-interest? Or the pure, sun-bright gaze of wisdom from a covetous leer? Such origins are impossible, and people who dream about Beyond Good and Evil


such things are fools - at best. Things of the highest value must have another, separate origin of their own , - they cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, lowly world, from this mad chaos of confusion and desire. Look instead to the lap of being, the everlasting, the hidden God, the 'thing-in-itself ' this is where their ground must be, and nowhere else!' - This way of judging typifies the prejudices by which metaphysicians of all ages can be recognized: this type of valuation lies behind all their logical procedures. From these 'beliefs' they try to acquire their 'knowledge,' to acquire something that will end up being solemnly christened as 'the truth.' The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in oppositions of values . It has not occurred to even the most cautious of them to start doubting right here at the threshold, where it is actually needed the most - even though they had vowed to themselves ' de omnibus dubitandum .' But we can doubt, first, whether opposites even exist and, second, whether the popular valuations and value oppositions that have earned the metaphysicians' seal of approval might not only be foreground appraisals. Perhaps they are merely provisional perspectives, perhaps they are not even viewed head-on; perhaps they are even viewed from below, like a frog-perspective, to borrow an expression that painters will recognize. Whatever value might be attributed to truth, truthfulness, andselflessness, it could be possible that appearance, the will to deception, and craven self-interest should be accorded a higher and more fundamental value for all life. It could even be possible that whatever gives value to those good and honorable things has an incriminating link, bond, or tie to the very things that look like their evil opposites; perhaps they are even essentially the same. Perhaps! - But who is willing to take charge of such a dangerous Perhaps! For this we must await the arrival of a new breed of philosophers, ones whose taste and inclination are somehow the reverse of those we have seen so far - philosophers of the dangerous Perhaps in every sense. - And in all seriousness: I see these new philosophers approaching. I have kept a close eye on the philosophers and read between their lines for long enough to say to myself: the greatest part of conscious thought


Cf. Human, All too Human ,I, . Everything is to be doubted. On the prejudices of philosophers must still be attributed to instinctive activity, and this is even the case for philosophical thought. This issue needs re-examination in the same way that heredity and 'innate characteristics' have been re-examined. Just as the act of birth makes no difference to the overall course of heredity, neither is 'consciousness' opposed to instinct in any decisive sense - most of a philosopher's conscious thought is secretly directed and forced into determinate channels by the instincts. Even behind all logic and its autocratic posturings stand valuations or, stated more clearly, physiological requirements for the preservation of a particular type of life. For example, that the determinate is worth more than the indeterminate, appearance worth less than the 'truth': despite all their regulative importance for us , these sorts of appraisals could still be just foreground appraisals, a particular type of niaiserie , precisely what is needed for the preservation of beings like us. But this assumes that it is not man who is the 'measure of things' ... Wedonotconsiderthefalsityofajudgmentasitself an objection to a judgment;thisisperhapswhereournewlanguagewillsoundmostforeign.The question is how far the judgment promotes and preserves life, how well it preserves, and perhaps even cultivates, the type. And we are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgments (which include synthetic judgments a priori ) are the most indispensable to us, and that without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the wholly invented world of the unconditioned and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world through numbers, people could not live - that a renunciation of false judgments would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. To acknowledge untruth as a condition of life: this clearly means resisting the usual value feelings in a dangerous manner; and a philosophy that risks such a thing would by that gesture alone place itself beyond good and evil. What goads us into regarding all philosophers with an equal measure of mistrust and mockery is not that we are struck repeatedly by how innocent Silliness. Beyond Good and Evil


they are - how often and easily they err and stray, in short, their childish childlikeness - but rather that there is not enough genuine honesty about them: even though they all make a huge, virtuous racket as soon as the problem of truthfulness is even remotely touched upon. They all act as if they had discovered and arrived at their genuine convictions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely insouciant dialectic (in contrast to the mystics of every rank, who are more honest than the philosophers and also sillier - they talk about 'inspiration' -): while what essentially happens is that they take a conjecture, a whim, an 'inspiration' or, more typically, they take some fervent wish that they have sifted through and made properly abstract - and they defend it with rationalizations after the fact. They are all advocates who do not want to be seen as such; for the most part, in fact, they are sly spokesmen for prejudices that they christen as 'truths' - and very far indeed from the courage of conscience that confesses to this fact, this very fact; and very far from having the good taste of courage that also lets this be known, perhaps to warn a friend or foe, or out of a high-spirited attempt at self-satire. The stiff yet demure tartuffery used by the old Kant to lure us along the clandestine, dialectical path that leads the way (or rather: astray) to his 'categorical imperative' this spectacle provides no small amusement for discriminating spectators like us, who keep a close eye on the cunning tricks of the old moralists and preachers of morals. Or even that hocus pocus of a mathematical form used by Spinoza to arm and outfit his philosophy (a term which, when all is said and done, really means ' his love of wisdom') and thus, from the very start, to strike terror into the heart of the attacker who would dare to cast a glance at the unconquerable maiden and Pallas Athena: - how much personal timidity and vulnerability this sick hermit's masquerade reveals!


I have gradually come to realize what every great philosophy so far has been: a confession of faith on the part of its author, and a type of involuntary and unself-conscious memoir; in short, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has always grown. Actually, to explain how the strangest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really come about, it is always good (and wise) to begin by asking: what morality is it (is he -) getting at? Consequently, I do not believe that a 'drive for knowledge' is the father of On the prejudices of philosophers philosophy, but rather that another drive, here as elsewhere, used knowledge (and mis-knowledge!) merely as a tool. But anyone who looks at people's basic drives, to see how far they may have played their little game right here as inspiring geniuses (or daemons or sprites -), will find that they all practiced philosophy at some point, - and that every single one of them would be only too pleased to present itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and as rightful master of all the other drives. Because every drive craves mastery, and this leads it to try philosophizing. - Of course: with scholars, the truly scientific people, things might be different - 'better' if you will -, with them, there might really be something like a drive for knowledge, some independent little clockwork mechanism that, once well wound, ticks bravely away without essentially involving the rest of the scholar's drives. For this reason, the scholar's real 'interests' usually lie somewhere else entirely, with the family, or earning money, or in politics; in fact, it is almost a matter of indifference whether his little engine is put to work in this or that field of research, and whether the 'promising' young worker turns himself into a good philologist or fungus expert or chemist: - it doesn't signify anything about him that he becomes one thing or the other. In contrast, there is absolutely nothing impersonal about the philosopher; and in particular his morals bear decided and decisive witness to who he is - which means, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand with respect to each other.


How malicious philosophers can be! I do not know anything more venomous than the joke Epicurus allowed himself against Plato and the Platonists: he called them Dionysiokolakes. Literally, the foreground meaning of this term is 'sycophants of Dionysus' and therefore accessories of the tyrant and brown-nosers; but it also wants to say 'they're all actors , there's nothing genuine about them' (since Dionysokolax was a popular term for an actor). And this second meaning is really the malice that Epicurus hurled against Plato: he was annoyed by the magnificent style, the mise-en-sc'ene that Plato and his students were so good at, - that Epicurus was not so good at! He, the old schoolmaster from Samos, who sat hidden in his little garden in Athens and wrote three hundred books, Epicurus, Fragment . Beyond Good and Evil who knows? perhaps out of anger and ambition against Plato? - It took a hundred years for Greece to find out who this garden god Epicurus had been. - Did it find out? In every philosophy there is a point where the philosopher's 'conviction' steps onto the stage: or, to use the language of an ancient Mystery: adventavit asinus pulcher et fortissimus.


So you want to live 'according to nature?' Oh, you noble Stoics, what a fraud is in this phrase! Imagine something like nature, profligate without measure, indifferent without measure, without purpose and regard, without mercy and justice, fertile and barren and uncertain at the same time, think of indifference itself as power - how could you live according to this indifference? Living - isn't that wanting specifically to be something other than this nature? Isn't living assessing, preferring, being unfair, being limited, wanting to be different? And assuming your imperative to 'live according to nature' basically amounts to 'living according to life' - well how could you not ? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be? - But in fact, something quite different is going on: while pretending with delight to read the canon of your law in nature, you want the opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to dictate and annex your morals and ideals onto nature - yes, nature itself -, you demand that it be nature 'according to Stoa' and you want to make all existence exist in your own image alone - as a huge eternal glorification and universalization of Stoicism! For all your love of truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to have a false , namely Stoic, view of nature, that you can no longer see it any other way, - and some abysmal piece of arrogance finally gives you the madhouse hope that because you know how to tyrannize yourselves - Stoicism is self-tyranny -, nature lets itself be 'In came the ass / beautiful and very strong.' According to KSA these lines could be taken from G. C. Lichtenberg's Vermischte Schriften ( Miscellaneous Writings )( ), V, p. . On the prejudices of philosophers


tyrannized as well: because isn't the Stoic a piece of nature? ... But this is an old, eternal story: what happened back then with the Stoics still happens today, just as soon as a philosophy begins believing in itself. It always creates the world in its own image, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the 'creation of the world,' to the causa prima .


All over Europe these days, the problem 'of the real and the apparent world' gets taken up so eagerly and with such acuity-Iwould even say: shrewdness - that you really start to think and listen; and anyone who hears only a 'will to truth' in the background here certainly does not have the sharpest of ears. In rare and unusual cases, some sort of will to truth might actually be at issue, some wild and adventurous streak of courage, a metaphysician's ambition to hold on to a lost cause, that, in the end, will still prefer a handful of 'certainty' to an entire wagonload of pretty possibilities. There might even be puritanical fanatics of conscience who wouldratherlie dying on an assured nothing than an uncertain something. But this is nihilism, and symptomatic of a desperate soul in a state of deadly exhaustion, however brave such virtuous posturing may appear. Withstronger,livelierthinkers,however,thinkerswhostillhaveathirstfor life, things look different. By taking sides against appearance and speaking about'perspective'inanewlyarroganttone,bygrantingtheirownbodies about as little credibility as they grant the visual evidence that says 'the earth stands still,' and so, with seemingly good spirits, relinquishing their most secure possession (since what do people believe in more securely these days than their bodies?), who knows whether they are not basically trying to re-appropriate something that was once possessed even more securely , something from the old estate of a bygone faith, perhaps 'the immortal soul' or perhaps 'the old God,' in short, ideas that helped make life a bit better, which is to say stronger and more cheerful than 'modern ideas' can do? There is a mistrust of these modern ideas here, there is a disbelief in everything built yesterday and today; perhaps it is mixed with a bit of antipathy and contempt that can no longer stand the bric-a-brac of concepts from the most heterogeneous sources, which is First cause.


howso-called positivism puts itself on the market these days, a disgust felt by the more discriminating taste at the fun-fair colors and flimsy scraps of all these reality-philosophasters who have nothing new and genuine about them except these colors. Here, I think, we should give these skeptical anti-realists and epistemo-microscopists their just due: the instinct that drives them away from modern reality is unassailable, - what do we care for their retrograde shortcut! The essential thing about them is not that they want to go 'back': but rather, that they want to get away . A bit more strength, flight, courage, artistry: and they would want to get up and out , - and not go back! -


It seems to me that people everywhere these days are at pains to divert attention away from the real influence Kant exerted over German philosophy, and, in particular, wisely to overlook the value he attributed to himself. First and foremost, Kant was proud of his table of categories, and he said with this table in his hands: 'This is the hardest thing that ever could have been undertaken on behalf of metaphysics.' - But let us be clear about this 'could have been'! He was proud of having discovered a new faculty in humans, the faculty of synthetic judgments a priori .Of course he was deceiving himself here, but the development and rapid blossoming of German philosophy depended on this pride, and on the competitive zeal of the younger generation who wanted, if possible, to discover something even prouder - and in any event 'new faculties'! - But the time has come for us to think this over. How are synthetic judgments a priori possible ? Kant asked himself, - and what really was his answer? By virtue of a faculty , which is to say: enabled by an ability : unfortunately, though, not in these few words, but rather so laboriously, reverentially, and with such an extravagance of German frills and profundity that people failed to hear the comical niaiserie allemande in such an answer. In fact, people were beside themselves with joy over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its peak when Kant discovered yet another faculty, a moral faculty: - because the Germans were still moral back then, and The reference in this section is to Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft ( Critique of Pure Reason )( , ). In German: Verm oge eines Verm ogens . German silliness.


very remote from Realpolitik . - The honeymoon of German philosophy had arrived; all the young theologians of the Tubingen seminary ran off into the bushes - they were all looking for 'faculties.' And what didn't they find - in that innocent, abundant, still youthful age of the German spirit, when Romanticism, that malicious fairy, whispered, whistled, and sang, when people did not know how to tell the difference between 'discovering' and 'inventing'! Above all, a faculty of the 'supersensible': Schelling christened it intellectual intuition, and thus gratified the heart's desire of his basically piety-craving Germans. We can do no greater injustice to this whole high-spirited and enthusiastic movement (which was just youthfulness, however boldly it might have clothed itself in gray and hoary concepts) than to take it seriously or especially to treat it with moral indignation. Enough, we grew up, - the dream faded away. There came a time when people scratched their heads: some still scratch them today. There had been dreamers: first and foremost - the old Kant. 'By virtue of a faculty' - he had said, or at least meant. But is that really - an answer? An explanation? Or instead just a repetition of the question? So how does opium cause sleep? 'By virtue of a faculty,' namely the virtus dormitiva - replies the doctor in Moli'ere, quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, cujus est natura sensus assoupire .


But answers like this belong in comedy, and the time has finally come to replace the Kantian question 'How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?' with another question, 'Why is the belief in such judgments necessary ?' - to realize, in other words, that such judgments must be believed true for the purpose of preserving beings of our type; which is why these judgments could of course still be false ! Or, to be blunt, basic and clearer still: synthetic judgments a priori do not have 'to be possible' at all: we have no right to them, and in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments. It is only the belief in their truth that is necessary as a foreground belief and piece of visual evidence, belonging to the perspectival optics of life. - And, finally, to recall the enormous effect that 'the German philosophy' - its right to these quotation marks A reference to Hegel, H olderlin, and Schelling. In German: '' finden' und 'erfinden . ' ' 'Because there is a dormative virtue in it / whose nature is to put the senses to sleep.' From Moli`ere's Le Malade imaginaire ( The Hypochondriac )( ). Beyond Good and Evil is, I hope, understood? - has had all over Europe, a certain virtus dormitiva has undoubtedly had a role: the noble idlers, the virtuous, the mystics, artists, three-quarter-Christians, and political obscurantists of all nations were all delighted to have, thanks to German philosophy, an antidote to the still overpowering sensualism that was spilling over into this century from the previous one, in short - ' sensus assoupire ' ...