405. To what extent is the self-destruction of morality still a sign of its own strength? We Europeans have within us the blood of those who were ready to die for their faith; we have taken morality frightfully seriously, and there is nothing which we have not, at one time, sacrificed to it. On the other hand, our intellectual subtlety has been reached essentially through the vivisection of our consciences. We do not yet know the " whither " towards which we are urging our steps, now that we have departed from the soil of our forebears. But it was on this very soil that we acquired the strength which is now driving us from our homes in search of adventure, and it is thanks to that strength that we are now in mid-sea, surrounded by untried possibilities and things undiscovered we can no longer choose, we must be conquerors, now that we have no land in which we feel at home and in which we would fain " survive." A concealed "yea " is driving us forward, and it is stronger than all our " nays." Even our strength no longer bears with us in the old swampy land: we venture out into the open, we attempt the task. The world is still rich and undiscovered, and even to perish were better than to be half-men or poisonous men. Our very strength itself urges us to take to the sea; there where all suns have hitherto sunk we know of a new world.
III. i. GENERAL REMARKS.
406. LET us rid ourselves of a few superstitions which heretofore have been fashionable among philosophers!
407. Philosophers are prejudiced against appearance, change, pain, death, the things of the body, the senses, fate, bondage, and all that which has no purpose. In the first place, they believe in: absolute knowledge, (2) in knowledge for its own sake, (3) in virtue and happiness as necessarily related, (4) in the recognisability of men s acts. They are led by instinctive determinations of values, in which former cultures are reflected (more danger ous cultures too).
408. What have philosophers lacked"} (i) A sense of history, (2) a knowledge of physiology, (3) a goal in the future. The ability to criticise without irony or moral condemnation.
409. Philosophers have had (i) from times im memorial a wonderful capacity for the contradictio in adjecto, (2) they have always trusted concepts as unconditionally as they have mistrusted the senses: it never seems to have occurred to them that notions and words are our inheritance of past ages in which thinking was neither very clear nor very exact. What seems to dawn upon philosophers last of all: that they must no longer allow themselves to be presented with concepts already conceived, nor must they merely purify and polish up those con cepts; but they must first make them, create them, themselves, and then present them and get people to accept them. Up to the present, people have trusted their concepts generally, as if they had been a wonderful dowry from some kind of wonderland: but they constitute the inheritance of our most remote, most foolish, and most intelli gent forefathers. This piety towards that which already exists in us is perhaps related to the moral element in science. What we needed above all is absolute scepticism towards all traditional concepts (like that which a certain philosopher may already have possessed and he was Plato, of course: for he taught the reverse]. 29 410. Profoundly mistrustful towards the dogmas of the theory of knowledge, I liked to look now out of this window, now out of that, though I took good care not to become finally fixed anywhere, indeed I should have thought it dangerous to have done so though finally: is it within the range of probabilities for an instrument to criticise its own fitness? What I noticed more particu larly was, that no scientific scepticism or dog matism has ever arisen quite free from all arrieres pense"es that it has only a secondary value as soon as the motive lying immediately behind it is discovered. Fundamental aspect: Kant s, Hegel s, Schopen hauer s, the sceptical and epochistical, the histori- fying and the pessimistic attitudes all have a moral origin. I have found no one who has dared to criticise the moral valuations, and I soon turned my back upon the meagre attempts that have been made to describe the evolution of these feelings (by English and German Darwinians). How can Spinoza s position, his denial and repudiation of the moral values, be explained? (It was the result of his Theodicy!)
411. Morality regarded as the highest form of protection. Our world is either the work and expression (the modus} of God, in which case it must be in the highest degree perfect (Leibnitz s 33O conclusion...), and no one doubted that he knew what perfection must be like, and then all evil can only be apparent (Spinoza is more radical he says this of good and evil), or it must be a part of God s high purpose (a consequence of a particu larly great mark of favour on God s part, who thus allows man to choose between good and evil: the privilege of being no automaton; " freedom," with the ever-present danger of making a mistake and of choosing wrongly...See Simplicius, for instance, in the commentary to Epictetus). Or our world is imperfect; evil and guilt are real, determined, and are absolutely inherent to its being; in that case it cannot be the real world: consequently knowledge can only be a way of denying the world, for the latter is error which may be recognized as such. This is Schopenhauer s opinion, based upon Kantian first principles. Pascal was still more desperate: he thought that even knowledge must be corrupt and false- that revelation is a necessity if only in order to recognise that the world should be denied...
412. Owing to our habit of believing in uncondi tional authorities, we have grown to feel a profound need for them: indeed, this feeling is so strong that, even in an age of criticism such as Kant s was, it showed itself to be superior to the need for criticism, and, in a certain sense, was able to subject the whole work of critical acumen, and to convert it to its own use. It proved its 31 superiority once more in the generation which followed, and which, owing to its historical instincts, naturally felt itself drawn to a relative view of all authority, when it converted even the Hegelian philosophy of evolution (history re- christened and called philosophy) to its own use, and represented history as being the self-revela tion and self-surpassing of moral ideas. Since Plato, philosophy has lain under the dominion of morality. Even in Plato s predecessors, moral interpretations play a most important role (Anaxi- mander declares that all things are made to perish as a punishment for their departure from pure being; Heraclitus thinks that the regularity of phenomena is a proof of the morally correct character of evolution in general).
413. The progress of philosophy has been hindered most seriously hitherto through the influence of moral arrieres-pensees.
414. In all ages, " fine feelings " have been regarded as arguments, " heaving breasts " have been the bellows of godliness, convictions have been the " criteria " of truth, and the need of opposition has been the note of interrogation affixed to wisdom. This falseness and fraud permeates the whole history of philosophy. But for a few- respected sceptics, no instinct for intellectual uprightness is to be found anywhere. Finally, 332 Kant guilelessly sought to make this thinker s corruption scientific by means of his concept, " practical reason? He expressly invented a reason which, in certain cases, would allow one not to bother about reason that is to say, in cases where the heart s desire, morality, or " duty " are the motive power.
415. Hegel: his popular side, the doctrine of war and of great men. Right is on the side of the victorious: he (the victorious man) stands for the progress of mankind. His is an attempt at proving the dominion of morality by means of history. Kant: a kingdom of moral values withdrawn from us, invisible, real. Hegel: a demonstrable process of evolution, the actualisation of the kingdom of morality. We shall not allow ourselves to be deceived either in Kant s or Hegel s way: We no longer believe, as they did, in morality, and therefore have no philosophies to found with the view of justify ing morality. Criticism and history have no charm for us in this respect: what is their charm, then?
416. The importance of German philosophy (Hegel), the thinking out of a kind of pantheism which would not reckon evil, error, and suffering as arguments against godliness. This grand initia tive was misused by the powers that were (State, 33 etc.) to sanction the rights of the people that happened to be paramount. Schopenhauer appears as a stubborn opponent of this idea; he is a moral man who, in order to keep in the right concerning his moral valuation, finally becomes a denier of the world. Ultimately he becomes a " mystic." I myself have sought an (Esthetic justification of the ugliness in this world. I regarded the desire for beauty and for the persistence of certain forms as a temporary preservative and recupera tive measure: what seemed to me to be funda mentally associated with pain, however, was the eternal lust of creating and the eternal compulsion to destroy. We call things ugly when we look at them with the desire of attributing some sense, some new sense, to what has become senseless: it is the accumulated power of the creator which compels him to regard what has existed hitherto as no longer acceptable, botched, worthy of being sup pressed ugly!
417. My first solution of the problem; Dionysian wisdom. The joy in the destruction of the most noble thing, and at the sight of its gradual undoing, regarded as the joy over what is coming and what lies in the future, which triumphs over actual things, however good they may be. Dionysian: temporary identification with the principle of life (voluptuousness of the martyr included). My innovations. The Development of Pessimism: intellectual pessimism; moral criticism, the dissolution of the last comfort. Knowledge, a sign of decay, veils by means of an illusion all strong action; isolated culture is unfair and therefore strong. (1) My fight against decay and the increas ing weakness of personality. I sought a new centrum. (2) The impossibility of this endeavour is recognized. (3) I therefore travelled farther along the road of dissolution and along it I found new sources of strength for individuals. We must be destroyers. I perceived that the state of dissolution is one in which individual beings are able to arrive at a kind of perfection not possible hitherto, it is an image and isolated example of life in general. To the paralysing feeling of general dissolution and imperfec tion, I opposed the Eternal Recurrence.
418. People naturally seek the picture of life in that philosophy which makes them most cheerful that is to say, in that philosophy which gives the highest sense of freedom to their strongest instinct. This is probably the case with me.
419. German philosophy, as a whole, Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to mention the greatest, is the most out-and-out form of romanticism and home-sickness that has ever yet existed: it is a yearning for the best that has ever been known on earth. One is at home nowhere; that which is ultimately yearned after is a place where one can somehow feel at home; because one has been at home there before, and that place is the Greek world! But it is precisely in that direction that airbridges are broken down saveoji course, thlTrainbow of concepts! And the latter lead everywhere, to all the homes and " fatherlands " that ever existed for Greek souls! Certainly, one must be very light and thin in order to cross these bridges! But what happiness lies even in this desire for spirituality, almost for ghostliness! With it, how far one is from the " press and bustle " and the mechanical boorish- ness of the natural sciences, how far from the vulgar din of " modern ideas "! One wants toget back to the Greeks via the Fathers of the Church, from NortrTTo South, from formulae to forms;" the passage out of antiquity Christianity is still a source of joy as a means of access to antiquity, as a portion of the old world itself, as a glistening mosaic of ancient concepts and ancient valuations. Arabesques, scroll-work, rococo of scholastic abstractions always better, that is to say, finer and more slender, than the peasant and plebeian reality of Northern Europe, and still a protest on the part of higher intellectuality against the peasant war and insurrection of the mob which have become master of the intellectual taste of Northern Europe, and which had its leader in a man as great and unintellectual as Luther: in 336 this respect German philosophy belongs to the Counter-Reformation, it might even be looked upon as related to the Renaissance, or at least to the will to Renaissance, the will to get ahead with the discovery of antiquity, with the excavation of ancient philosophy, and 1 above all of pre-Socratic philosophy the most thoroughly dilapidated of all Greek temples! Possibly, in a few hundred years, people will be of the opinion that all German philosophy derived its dignity from this fact, that step by step it attempted to reclaim the soil of antiquity, and that therefore all demands for " originality " must appear both petty and foolish when compared with Germany s higher claim to having refastened the bonds which seemed for ever rent the bonds which bound us to the Greeks, the highest type of " men " ever evolved hitherto. Today we are once more approach ing all the fundamental principles of the cosmogony which the Greek mind in Anaximander, Hera- clitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras, was responsible for. Day by day we are growing more Greek; at first, as is only natural, the change remains confined to concepts and valuations, and we hover around like Grecis- ing spirits: but it is to be hoped that some day our body will also be involved! Here lies (and has always lain) my hope for the German nation.
420. I do not wish to convert anybody to philosophy: it is both necessary and perhaps desirable that the 37 philosopher should be a rare plant. Nothing is more repugnant to me than the scholarly praise of philosophy which is to be found in Seneca and Cicero. Philosophy has not much in common with virtue. I trust I may be allowed to say that even the scientific man is a fundamentally different person from the philosopher. What I most desire is, that the genuine notion " philosopher " should not completely perish in Germany. There are so many incomplete creatures in Germany already who would fain conceal their ineptitude beneath such noble names.
421. I must set up the highest ideal of a philosopher. Learning is not everything! The scholar is the sheep in the kingdom of learning; he studies be cause he is told to do so, and because others have done so before him.
422. The superstition concern in g philosophers They are confounded with men of science. As if the value of things were inherent in them and required only to be held on to tightly! To what extent are their researches carried on under the influence of values which already prevail (their hatred of appearance of the body, etc.)? Schopenhauer concerning morality (scorn of Utilitarianism). Ultimately the confusion goes so far that Darwinism is regarded as philosophy, and thus at the present day power has gone over to the men of science. Even Frenchmen like Taine prosecute. Y research, or mean to prosecute research, without being already in possession of a standard of valuation. Prostration before " facts " of a kind of cult. As a matter of fact, they destroy the existing valuations. The explanation of this misunderstanding. The man who is able to command is a rare phenomenon; he misinterprets himself. What one wants to do, above all, is to disclaim all authority and to attribute it to circumstances. In Germany the critic s estimations belong to the history of awakening manhood. Lessing, etc. (Napoleon concerning Goethe). As a matter of fact, the movement is again made retrograde owing to German romanticism: and the fame of German philosophy relies upon it as if it dissipated the danger of scepticism and could demonstrate faith. Both tendencies culminate in Hegel: at bottom, what he did was to generalise the fact of German criticism and the fact of German romanticism, a kind of dialectical fatalism, but to the honor of intellectuality, with the actual submission of the philosopher to reality. The critic prepares the way: that is all! With Schopenhauer the philosopher s mission dawns; it is felt that the object is to determine values; still under the dominion of eudemonism. The ideal of Pessimism.
423. Theory and practice. This is a pernicious dis tinction, as if there were an instinct of knowledge, 39 which, without inquiring into the utility or harm- fulness of a thing, blindly charged at the truth; and then that, apart from this instinct, there were the whole world of practical interests. In contradiction of this, I try to show what instincts are active behind all these pure theorists, and how the latter, as a whole, under the dominion of their instincts, fatally make for some thing which to their minds is " truth," to their minds and only to their minds. The struggle between systems, together with the struggle between epistemological scruples, is one which involves very special instincts (forms of vitality, of decline, of classes, of races, etc.). The so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and of conquest: in obedience to this lust the senses, memory, and the instincts, etc., were developed. The quickest possible reduction of the phenomena, economy, the accumulation of spoil from the world of know ledge (i.e. that portion of the world which has been appropriated and made manageable)...Morality is therefore such a curious science, because it is in the highest degree practical: the purely scientific position, scientific uprightness, is thus immediately abandoned, as soon as morality calls for replies to its questions. Morality says: I require certain answers reasons, arguments; scruples may come afterwards, or they may not come at all. " How must one act? " If one considers that one is dealing with a supremely evolved type a type which has been " dealt with " for countless thousands of years, and in which everything has become instinct, expediency, automatism, fatality, the urgency of this moral question seems rather funny. " How must one act? " Morality has always been a subject of misunderstanding: as a matter of fact, a certain species, which was constituted to act in a certain way, wished to justify itself by making its norm paramount. " How must one act? " this is not a cause, but an effect. Morality follows, the ideal comes first...On the other hand, the appearance of moral scruples (or in other words, the coming to conscious ness of the values which guide action) betray a certain morbidness; strong ages and people do not ponder over their rights, nor over the principles of action, over instinct or over reason. Conscious ness is a sign that the real morality that is to say, the certainty of instinct which leads to a definite course of action is going to the dogs...Every time a new world of consciousness is created, the moralists are signs of a lesion, of impoverishment and of disorganization. Those who are deeply instinctive fear bandying words over duties: among them are found pyrrhonic opponents of dialectics and of knowableness in general...A virtue is refuted with a " for."...Thesis: The appearance of moralists belongs to periods when morality is declining. Thesis: The moralist is a dissipator of moral instincts, however much he may appear to be their restorer. 41 Thesis: That which really prompts the action of a moralist is not a moral instinct, but the instincts of decadence, translated into the forms of morality (he regards the growing uncertainty of the instincts as corruption). Thesis: The instincts of decadence which, thanks to moralists, wish to become master of the in stinctive morality of stronger races and ages, are: (1) The instincts of the weak and of the botched; (2) The instincts of the exceptions, of the anchorites, of the unhinged, of the abortions of quality or of the reverse; (3) The instincts of the habitually suffering, who require a noble interpretation of their condition, and who therefore require to be as poor physi ologists as possible.
424. The humbug of the scientific spirit. One should not affect the spirit of science, when the time to be scientific is not yet at hand; but even the genuine investigator has to abandon vanity, and has to affect a certain kind of method which is not yet seasonable. Neither should we falsify things and thoughts, which we have arrived at differently, by means of a false arrangement of deduction and dialectics. It is thus that Kant in his " morality " falsifies his inner tendency to psychology; a more modern example of the same thing is Herbert Spencer s Ethics. A man should neither conceal nor misrepresent the facts concerning the way in which he conceived his 54. thoughts. The deepest and most inexhaustible books will certainly always have something of the and impetuous character of Pascal s The motive forces and valuations have lain long below the surface; that which comes uppermost is their effect. 1 guard against all the humbug of a false sefcntinc spirit: (1) In respect of the manner of.ftmnuftufiin, if it does not correspond to the rro of the thoughts; (2) In respect of the demands far MrtftM& which, at a given period in science, may be quite impossible; (3) In respect of the demand for tiyertnxtr, far cold impersonal treatment, where, as in the case of all valuations, we describe ourselves and our intimate experiences in a couple of words. There are ludicrous forms of vanity, as, for instance, Saaate-Beuve s. He actually worried himself all his life bctMBie- he had shown some warmth or passion either " no "or * amf and he would fain have led that fact out of his life. * 425. Objectivity in the philosopher: moral indifference in regard to one's self, blindness in regard to either favourable or fetal circumstances, Un- scrupuloasness in the use of dangerous means: peiveufcy and complexity of character considered as an advantage and exploited. My ptofonad iuJUfaeace to myself: I refuse to derive any advantage from my knowledge, nor do I wish to escape any disadvantages which it may entail. I include among these disadvantages that which is called the perversion of character; this prospect is beside the point: I use my char acter, but I try neither to understand it nor to change it the personal calculation of virtue has not entered my head once. It strikes me that one closes the doors of knowledge as soon as one becomes interested in one s own personal case or even in the " Salvation of one s soul "!...One should not take one s morality too seriously, nor should one forfeit a modest right to the opposite of morality...A sort of heritage of morality is perhaps pre supposed here: one feels that one can be lavish with it and fling a great deal of it out of the window without materially reducing one s means. One is never tempted to admire " beautiful souls," one always knows one s self to be their superior. The monsters of virtue should be met with inner scorn; deniaiser la vertu Oh, the joy of it! One should revolve round one s self, have no desire to be " better " or " anything else " at all than one is. One should be too interested to omit throwing the tentacles or meshes of every mor ality out to things.
426. Concerning the psychology of philosophers. They should be psychologists this was possible only from the nineteenth century onwards and no longer little Jack Homers, who see three or four feet in front of them, and are almost satisfied to burrow inside themselves. We psychologists of the future are not very intent on self-contempla tion: we regard it almost as a sign of degeneration when an instrument endeavours " to know itself": * we are instruments of knowledge and we would fain possess all the precision and ingenuousness of an instrument consequently we may not analyse or " know " ourselves. The first sign of a great psychologist s self-preservative instinct: he never goes in search of himself, he has no eye, no interest, no inquisitiveness where he himself is concerned...The great egoism of our dominating will insists on our completely shutting our eyes to ourselves, and on our appearing " impersonal, " " disinterested "! Oh to what a ridiculous degree we are the reverse of this! We are no Pascals, we are not particularly in terested in the " Salvation of the soul," in our own happiness, and in our own virtue. We have neither enough time nor enough curiosity to be so con cerned with ourselves. Regarded more deeply, the case is again different, we thoroughly mistrust all men who thus contemplate their own navels: be cause introspection seems to us a degenerate form of the psychologist s genius, as a note of interroga tion affixed to the psychologist s instinct: just as a painter s eye is degenerate which is actuated by the will to see for the sake of seeing. * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. Goethe invariably inveighed against the " yvS6i. vfavrov " of the Socratic school; he was of the opinion that an animal which tries to see its inner self must be sick.
2. A CRITICISM OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
427. The apparition of Greek philosophers since the time nfjnrrateft i* a symptom, of decadence; the instincts become-parainount. The " Sophist " Js still quite Hellenic as are also Anaxagoras, Democritus, and the great lonians; but only as transitional forms. The polis loses its faith in the unity of its culture, in its rights of dominion over every "ofHer polls. 7TT ultttresytfiaT is to say7 T He gods," are exchanged, and thus the belief in the exclusive prerogative of the deus autochthonus is lost. Good and Evil of whatever origin get mixed: the boundaries separ ating good from evil gradually vanish...This is the " Sophist."...On the other hand, the " philosopher " is the reactionary: he insists upon the old virtues. He" sees the reason of decay in fHe decay~of~tnstitu- tions: he therefore wishes to revive old institutions; he sees decay in the decline of authority: he therefore endeavours to find new authorities (he travels abroad, explores foreign literature and exotic religions...); he will reinstate the ideal polis, after the concept " polis " has become super annuated (just as the Jews kept themselves to gether as a " people " after they had fallen into slavery). They b_ecpme_interested in all tyrants: their desire is to re-establish virtue with force majeure. 346 Gradually_every thing- genuinely Hellenic is held responsible for the state of decay (and Plato is just as ungrateful to Pericles, Homer, tragedy, and rhetoric as the prophets are to David and Saul). [The downfall of Greece is conceived as an objection }to the fundamental principles of Hellenic culture; the profound error of philosophers. Conclusion: the Greek world perishes. The cause thereof: Homer, mythology, ancient morality, etc. The fl#V-Hellenic development of philosophers valuations: the Egyptian influence (" Life after death " made into law...); the Semitic influence (the " dignity of the sage," the " Sheik "); the Pythagorean influence, the subterranean cults, Silence, means of terrorisation consisting of appeals to a " Beyond," mathematics: the religious valua tion consisting of a sort of intimacy with a cosmic entity; the sacerdotal, ascetic, and transcendental influences; the dialectical influence, I am of opinion that even Plato already betrays revolting and pedantic meticulousness in his concepts! Decline of good intellectual taste: the hateful noisiness of every kind of direct dialectics seems no longer to be felt. The two decadent tendencies and extremes run side by side: (a) the luxuriant and more charming kind of decadence which shows a love of pomp and art, and () the gloomy kind, with its religious and moral pathos, its stoical self-hardening tendency, its Platonic denial of the senses, and its preparation of the soil for the coming of Christianity.
428. To what extent psychologists have been cor rupted by the moral idiosyncrasy! Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage to advance the theory of the non-free will (that is to say, the theory that denies morality); not one had the courage to identify the typical feature of happiness, of every kind of happiness (" pleasure "), with the will to power: for the pleasure of power was considered immoral; not one had the courage to regard virtue as a result of immorality (as a result of a will to power) in the service of a species (or of a race, or of a0); for the will to power was considered immoral. In the whole of moral evolution, there is no sign of truth: all the conceptual elements which come into play are fictions; all the psychological tenets are false; all the forms of logic employed in this department of prevarication are sophisms. The chief feature of all moral philosophers is their total lack of intellectual cleanliness and self-control: they regard " fine feelings " as arguments: their heaving breasts seem to them the bellows of godliness...Moral philosophy is the most suspicious period in the history of the human intellect. The first great example: in the name of morality and under its patronage, a great wrong was committed, which as a matter of fact was in every respect an act of decadence. Sufficient stress cannot be laid upon this fact, that the great Greek philosophers not only represented the-4eadencc Gi-evet~kmd~of-.Greek ability, but also