(Originally written August 26, 2007 in Notebook 18)
Beyond Good & Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
248
There are two types of genius:
1) That which wants to beget (man)
2) That which wants to give birth (woman)
These two types of peoples and genius search for one another looking to combine (as with man and woman) but, as with man and woman they often misunderstand one another.
249
"What is best in us we do not know - we cannot know" (Nietzsche 375).
250
Europe owes many things to the Jews, both good and bad.
Above all Europe owes the grand style of morality, infinite demands, infinite meanings; these we owe to the Jews and it is both the best and worst they have offered.
Nietzsche seeks to initiate a revolution process. He uses the Jews as a model on how to do so while disagreeing with the values they have set.
251
The Jews are the strongest and purest race in all of Europe. They prevail in hardships and change when they wish to.
The Jews have a faith that stands unembarrassed in the presence of modern ideas.
The Jews, if they wished, could take over all of Europe.
But rather than conquering the Jews wish only to be admitted and assimilated into a nation's culture.
The task which Nietzsche is serious about is the cultivation of a new caste that will rule Europe.
252
The English are unphilosophic as a race. Bacon is an attack on the philosophical spirit. Hobbes, Hume and Locke have amounted to a debasement of the value of philosophy.
His characteristic of an unphilosophical race is to cling to Christianity. The English need Christianity for its discipline, its power to moralize and its power to humanize.
The English person lacks a musical sense. The movements of their bodies and souls completely lack rhythm and dance.
253
There are truths that are recognized by mediocre minds at best.
The spirit of respectable, albeit mediocre, English minds like Darwin, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer is becoming fashionable in middle Europe.
These mediocre minds are necessary at times. For they are knowledgeable, but the higher man is a man who "can"
The disparity between 'know' and 'can' is great. In fact, a high mind must be able to do something starkly new and innovative. Their focus on new and can may demand that he not know as much.
254
The French are a semi-successful blending of the North and South cultures.
255
We must rise above the good and evil, and as the sun sets on the moral world it becomes hospitable and profound enough for fugitives.
256
"Europe wants to become one" (Nietzsche, 386).
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