(Originally written August 8, 2007 in Book 16)
Beyond Good & Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
20
All philosophical concepts are intertwined. No one discovers anything new any more, they only come back to an idea long forgotten. It is a remembering of sorts.
21
The "cause sui" is the greatest conceived self-contradiction.
"The desire for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense... [is] the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility, and to absolute God, the world, ancestors, chance and society" (Nietzsche, 218).
We ought to use cute and effect only as pure concepts (fictional conveniences) for the purpose of communication. We ought not to use them for explanatory purposes.
By using cause and effect in explanations we impose our way of thinking to the thing itself and speak only mythologically.
Free will, un-free will, cause and effect, are simply mythology. "in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills" (Nietzsche, 219).
22
The conformity of nature to laws is merely interpretation.
One can use this interpretation in any way he wishes, but it remains nonetheless an interpretation.
23
We must sail over morality and immorality to life itself.
The path to this is true psychology.
Psychology is the path to fundamental problems.
Part Two: The Free Spirit
24
The will to knowledge is on the foundation of the will to ignorance. We stay ignorant because we desire the freedom it gives.
25
Beware of defending the "truth" or your theories because no philosopher has been proven right.
Rather than striving for truth, strive for masks and subtlety so "that you may be mistaken for what you are not, or feared a little" (Nietzsche, 226).
When you defend your theories you simply become a vengeance seeker.
26
"Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty; and the higher man must listen closely to every coarse or subtle cynicism, and congratulate himself when a clown without shame or a scientific satay speaks out precisely in front of him" (Nietzsche, 228).
Indignant people are people not worth listening to because no one lies more than the indignant.
27
Do things in a way that is difficult to understand. That way those friends who laugh and misunderstand can be gotten rid of with a laugh.
28
A writers tempo of style is dictated by his language and culture and translating it to other languages can make the good intentioned translation a caricature of the original.
What Nietzsche admired most about Plato and what drew him to read Plato was Plato's secrecy and sphinx nature.
29
"Independence is for the very few, it is a privilege of the strong" (Nietzsche, 231). Those who seek it are also daring to the point of recklessness.
30
Man's highest insights must (and should) sound like follies or crimes.
That which serves the higher soul is poison to the lower.
"The virtues of the common man might perhaps signify vices and weaknesses in a philosopher" (Nietzsche, 232).
Books for the whole world are foul and small people cling to them. "One should not go to church if one wants to breathe pure air" (Nietzsche, 233).
31
The youthful soul is reckless and pursues without art. Then they add art to their arguments. Then they, after feeling disappointments turn against themselves. Ten years later we realize that this was all still youthful.
32
During prehistoric times the value of an action was judged on its consequences. This is the pre-moral period of history.
The first step into the moral history of the world is knowing thyself.
Now actions are valued or devalued on their origin or the actor's intention.
We ought to have a shift in value judgments to the extra-moral.
The intent of an action is merely a sign or a symptom and requires interpretation.
Traditional morality is merely a prejudice, something that must be overcome.
33
The whole morality of self-sacrifice must be questioned because it is a seduction.
It seduces by making one feel good. Those who are self-sacrificial reap the benefits, therefore we must be cautious.
34
The faith in immediate certainties is a moral naïveté that reflects honor or philosophers.
Apart from morality this faith is stupidity.
It is nothing more than a prejudice that makes us believe that the truth is moe valuable than mere appearance.
Why must true and false be opposites? Why can't we just admit that they are just lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance.
36
Thinking is merely a relation of our drives to one another.
37
?
38
Often times people interpret things with their own indignation on enthusiasm so much that the actual text is buried beneath the interpretation.
39
Happiness and virtue are not valid arguments to support doctrines. But unhappy and evil are not counter arguments.
The truth may be dangerous and harmful. "The strength of spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure" (Nietzsche, 239).
40
Shame is an invention of man.
Masks are necessary to any profound man. The most profound man has a mask that is constantly growing.
41
We should be independent, but we must test ourselves to make sure we are ready.
We should not be too attached to any person because every person is a prison.
He should not be too attached to our fatherland.
We should detach ourselves from pity.
We should not be so attached to a science.
We should not become attached to our detachment.
We should not become attached to any virtue, lest it become a vice.
"One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence" (Nietzsche, 242).
42
The new philosophers will want to be riddles.
43
The new philosophers will be friends of truth, but they will not be dogmatists.
"It must offend their pride, also their taste, if their truth is supposed to be a truth for everyman" (Nietzsche, 243).
44
The new philosophers will be free spirits.
Free spirits are not those democratic spirits who are calling for an equality of all men. They merely want to make life easier for the herd and abolish all suffering whatsoever, as if suffering served no purpose.
The democratic spirit, heralded as a "free spirit" is actually a spirit in bondage. It is a spirit that visits to chain all spirits together and therefore chain them all, even the exceptional owes to the ground.
TO be a truly strong and free spirit it must grow under extreme pressure.
The free spirit believes that the evil, devilry, hardness, stoicism, forcefulness, slavery and beast-like qualities in man serve to enhance him as much as the opposites do.
Free spirits are not the most communicative ones. Free spirits are not the same as free thinkers.
The free spirit has faced himself from all prisons or nooks, from prejudice, youth, origin and accident from all lures like honor, money, offices and enthusiasm of the senses because they contain hidden dependencies.
With of these restraint the free spirit is uninhabited and can stomach the unstomachable, digest the undigestible, view the unviewable, and penetrate the impenetrable.
Free-spirits are friends of solitude.
Part Three: What is religious
45
In order to know anything, one must do a lot of work to know, and then it usually amounts to a few things.
"But a curiosity of my type remains after all the most agreeable of all vices - sorry, I meant to say: the love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth" (Nietzsche, 250).
46
"The Christian faith is a sacrifice: all freedom, all pride, all self-confident of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutiliation" (Nietzsche, 250).
Slaves are people who love as they hate: without nuance, to pain even! It is under these conditions that Christianity has appealed to so many. But, the complete lack of suffering in the masters (i.e. stoicism and skepticism) enraged the suffering Christian slaves and they overthrew their masters.
47
Wherever religion has popped up three things have followed:
1) Solitude
2) Fasting
3) Sexual abstinence
48
In Catholicism unbelief is seen as a rebellion against the spirit whereas Northern Protestantism sees unbelief as a return to spirit.
49
The Greek religion was noble because it affirms life despite the terrors of it. But when fear became an integral part of religion it paved the way for Christianity.
50
There are various types of passion for God:
- Peasant: sincere and obtrusive (ala Luther)
- Oriental- a slave who has been pardoned and elevated (a la Augustine)
51
The most powerful men bow before a saint because as they honor a saint they honor something in themselves.
They bow because a sight of a saint arouses superstition in them.
It was the "will to power" of the saint that struck fear in their hearts.
52
The Jewish Old Testament contains things so grand that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it.
The Old Testament is the book of divine justice, the New Testament is the book of grace.
The New Testament is a book for small souls and dogmatists. The pairing of the grand Old Testament and the small soul New Testament is the greatest sin against the spirit of literary Europe.
53
The European religious instinct is growing more and more powerful, but the faith in theism grows dimmer and dimmer.
54
"Modern philosophy, being an epistemological skepticism is, covertly an overtly anti-Christian - although, to say this for the benefit of more refined ears, by no means anti-religious" (Nietzsche, 256).
55
"There is a great ladder of religious cruelty with many rungs, but three of these are the most important" (Nietzsche, 257)
1. The sacrifice of human beings (especially one's loved ones) to a god
2. The sacrifice of one's nature (asceticism)
3. The sacrifice of God for nothing
56
Whoever thinks through pessimism thoroughly will come out at the end beyond morals, beyond good and evil.
He will come out the most-spirited, alive and affirming human ever.
57
One day the concepts of "God" and "sin" (the most trouble causing concepts of all time) will be viewed as a child's toy.
58
The genuinely religious life requires a life of leisure, or an aristocratic air to it.
The religious life is most fond of self-examination.
The modern world, with its busyness and stupid pride educate man for unbelief.
Every age has its naïveté, ours is the naïveté of the scholars' belief in his own superiority.
59
Those who wish to see life transcendentalized are those who have had inter lives spoiled the most.
It has been an incurable pessimism that has forced men to cling to a religious interpretation of existence. It has been fear that has drove man to religion.
Piety is the most subtle offspring of the fear of truth.
60
TO love men for God's sake is the most noble feeling attained by men.
61
The philosopher should use religion (as well as politics and economics) to cultivate and educate.
The philosopher can use religion to train people differently. Religion is used differently for those who rule and those who are ruled.
"To ordinary human beings, finally - the vast majority who exist for service and general advantage, and who may exist only for that -" (Nietzsche, 263). (Wow.)
Religion is a tool to subject the people for rules.
For those who are ruled, religion is a refreshment, a sanctification and justification of their suffering.
62
One always pays dearly when religions do not want to be used as a tool for education in philosopher's hands.
When religions insist on being sovereign in their own right, when they see themselves as ends and not means, people suffer terribly.
Religions preserve the weak and aid the suffering so that the natural selection process is destroyed. Religions weaken the human race.
Christianity is an arrogance. It is a hubris, a denial of rank in men. It is the pronouncement of the weak that they are strong. It is a complete flipping of truth.
Christianity has transformed man into a herd animal.
Part Four: Epigrams and Interludes
63: A teacher only takes things seriously in relation to his students, including himself.
64
Knowledge for its own sake is the last snare of morality
65
"The attraction of knowledge would be small if one did not have to overcome so much shame on the way" (Nietzsche, 269).
65a
One is most dishonest to one's god.
66
To let himself be taken advantage of could be the modesty of a god among men.
67
The love one is barbarism because it is done so at the expense of others. Likewise, love of God is barbarism.
68
The memory yields to one's pride (Freudian theory of repression)
69
One is mistaken if one doesn't believe that some killing is done considerately.
70
Life is repetitive. If one has character, one has experience.
71
"As long as you still experience the stars as something as 'above you' you lack the eye of knowledge" (Nietzsche, 270).
72
It is the duration, not the intensity of high feelings that make high men.
73
Whoever reaches his ideal transcends it.
73a
People can hide their glory from others and call that their pride.
74
A man with spirit is unbearable without gratitude and cleanliness.
75
"The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit" (Nietzsche, 271).
76
A warlike man sets upon himself in peace.
77
One wishes to bully, justify, scold, honor or hide one's habits with his principles.
78
"Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises" (Nietzsche, 271).
79
A soul which is loved but does not love betrays itself.
80
A matter that becomes clear no longer interprets us. What happens when we pursue and complete the Socratic maxim of "know thyself?"
81
"It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not ever quench thirst anymore? (Nietzsche, 271).
82
Pity for all means tyranny for you.
83: ?
84
Women learn to hate to the extent to which her charms diminish.
85
"The same affects in man and woman are yet different in tempo, therefore man and woman do not cease to misunderstand each other" (Nietzsche, 272).
86
Women hate the "woman" (concept, universal)
87
If one imprison's one's heart one can free one's spirit.
88
We mistrust clever people when they become embarrassed.
89
Terrible experiences pose the question if the experiencer is not terrible.
90
Heavy-spirited people are made light by love and hate (whereas others become weighted with these)
91
Those who are so cold they burn cause some to believe they glow.
92
"Who has not, for the sake of his good reputation - sacrificed himself once?" (Nietzsche, 273).
93: ?
94 Maturity consists of finding the seriousness one had as a child at play.
95
To be ashamed one's immorality is to be on the path to be ashamed of one's morality.
96
One should part from life as Odysseus left Nausica: blessing it rather than loving it.
97
A great man is merely an actor of his own ideal.
98
Our conscience, if trained right, kisses us while hurting us.
99
The voice of disappointment is listening for an echo but only hearing praise.
100
We see ourselves as simpler than we are to take a rest from others
101
The knowledgeable man may feel like "God become animal"
102
Discover that one loves you back should disgust you because the person is stupid enough to love you back
103 ?
104
The importance of Christians' love for man is what has ceased their boring people at the stake. If they were truly concerned with men they would burn heretics and false prophets still.
105
The salvation via deception is implantable for the free spirit.
106
"In music the passions enjoy themselves" (Nietzsche, 274).
107
The sign of strong character is making up your mind and standing by it without regard to the best counter argument, therefore it is occasionally a will to stupidity.
108
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, only moral interpretation of phenomena.
109
A criminal is often unequal to his crime
110
The lawyers of criminals are often not artful enough to turn his beautiful terribleness into an advantage.
111
The vanity is most impenetrable right after the pride has been wounded
112
Those who feel predestined to see and not believe will fend off all believers
113: ?
114
The enormous expectation in sexual love and sense of shame in this expectation spoils all perspective for women
115
When neither love nor hate is involved, a women's game is mediocre
116
The great epochs of life occur when we have guts enough to rechristen our evil as what is best in us
117
The will to overcome an affect is merely the will of some other affect
118
Admiration is an innocence that people don't realize that they too may some day be admired
119
The disgust with dirt may cause us to not clean ourselves or "justify" ourselves
120
"Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that there roots remain weak and are easily torn up" (Nietzsche, 276).
121
It was subtle of God to learn Greek and not to learn it well
122
Enjoying praise can be a courtesy of the heart (the opposite of vanity)
123
"Even concubinage has been corrupted - by marriage" (Nietzsche, 276).
124
Whoever rejoices on the stake triumphs over the absence of pain that he expected, not over pain itself.
125
When we are forced to change our minds about a person we hold the inconvenience against him.
126
A people is a detour to get to six or seven great men (and then around them).
127
Science offends the modesty of real women. It makes them curious about their bodies
128
The more abstract the truth, the more seduction is needed to teach it.
129
The devil deeps away from God the farthest, therefore the devil is the most ancient friend of wisdom
130
A man betrays himself when his talent decreases. Talent is finery; finery is a hiding place.
131
Men and women deceive themselves about one another. At bottom they love only themselves (or their own ideal).
132
"One is best punished for one's virtues" (Nietzsche, 278).
133
Those who cannot live their ideal live more frivolously than those without an ideal.
134
All credibility and evidence of truth is derived from the senses
135 - ?
136
One seeks a midwife for his thoughts to begin a good conversation
137
A remarkable scholar is often a mediocre man. A mediocre artist is often a remarkable man.
138
We do what we do in dreams and awake: we invent who we are are and then forget him
139
"In revenge and love women is more barbarous than man" (Nietzsche, 278).
140 ?
141
The abdomen is why man doesn't easily mistake himself for a god.
142
"'In true love it is the soul that envelopes the body's' are the chastest words ever spoken"
143 Our vanity wishes that what we do best is what is hardest for us; therefore, the origin of morality
144
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is probably something wrong with her sexuality.
145
Woman would not have the genius for finery if she didn't' instinctively have a secondary role.
146
Whoever fights monsters must not himself become a monster. The abyss stares at you when you stare at it.
147?
148
Woman are unequaled in seducing their neighbor into believing something and then believing piously in this opinion.
149
What a time experiences as evil is what an anti time experienced as good.
150
What happens around a hero is tragedy. What happens around a demigod is a satyr play. What happens around God? The World?
151
Having talent is not enough. One must have permission for the talent
152
Where the tree of knowledge is, there is so paradise. At least that is what the serpents say.
153
Whatever is done from love is done from beyond good and evil.
154
The delight in mockery is healthy, everyone else is pathology.
155
The sense of tragic gains or falls in level of sensuality.
156
Madness is rare in individuals, often in groups.
157
The thought of suicide is comforting on troubling nights
158
Reason and conscience bow to the tyrant in us.
159
One must repay good and ill, but not necessarily to that person
160
One no longer loves his insight once he communicates it.
161
Poets exploit their experiences.
162
Every nation believes our neighbor is his, not ours
163
Love brings out what is rare and exceptional, it easily deceives his normalcy
164
Jesus said the law was for servants of God. Be sons of God! What are morals to us sons of God?
165 -?
166
"Even when the mouth lies, the way it looks tells the truth" (Nietzsche, 282).
167 In hard men, intimacy involves shame
168 Christianity turned Eros into a vice
169
Talking a lot about one's self may be a way to conceal one's self
170 "Praise is more obtrusive than a reproach" (Nietzsche, 282).
171
TO a man of knowledge, pity seems ridiculous
172
From love of man one embraces another randomly, but we must not tell them that
173 One doesn't hate as long as one despises, but then only those they esteem
174 Utilitarians only love things useful as a vehicle for personal inclinations
175 - One loves one's desires and not the desired
176 Others' vanity only offends us if it offends our vanity
177 Nobody has been truthful enough about truthfulness
178 One doesn't credit clever people with their follies
179 The consequences of our actions take hold of us, indifferent to how much we have improved because of them
180 There is an innocence in lying based on a dedication to a course
181 - It is inhuman to bless when cursed
182 ?
183 "Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me" (Nietzsche, 287).
184 The spirits of kindness may be seen to be malice
185 I don't like him because I am not equal to him. Has any one said this?
Fin
02/08/07-08/13/07 Book 16
