Philosophers Pocket Quotes: Friedrich Nietzche
Beyond Good and Evil
You Higher men, the worst about you is: none of you has learned to dance as a man ought to dance - to dance beyond yourselves! What does it matter that you are failures?! How much is still possible! So learn to laugh beyond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, you fine dancers, high! higher! and do not forget to laugh well! It does not matter what philosophical standpoint you might take these days: any way you look at it, the erroneousness of the world we think we live in is the most certain and solid fact that our eyes can still grab hold of. We find reason after reason for it, reasons that might lure us into speculations about a deceptive principle in “the essence of things.” But anyone who makes thinking itself (and therefore “the spirit”) responsible for the falseness of the world (an honorable way out, taken by every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei), anyone who considers this world, together with space, time, form, and motion, to be falsely inferred – such a person would at the very least have ample cause to grow suspicious of thinking altogether. Hasn’t
it played the biggest joke on us to date? And what guarantee would there be that it wouldn’t keep doing what it has always done? In all seriousness, there is something touching and aweinspiring about the innocence that, to this day, lets a thinker place himself in front of consciousness with the request that it please give him honest answers we like to forget (even thoughtful spirits like to forget) that being made unhappy and evil are not counter-arguments either. Something could be true even if it is harmful and dangerous to the highest degree. It could even be part of the fundamental character of existence that people with complete knowledge get destroyed Anyone who has looked deeply into the world will probably guess the wisdom that lies in human superficiality. An instinct of preservation has taught people to be flighty, light, and false. It is barbaric to love one thing alone, since this one love will be pursued at the expense of all
others.
This
includes love of God our eyes find it more convenient to reproduce an image that they have often produced before than to register what is different and new about an impression: the latter requires more strength, more “morality.� It is awkward and difficult for the ear to hear something new; we are bad at listening to unfamiliar music. When we hear another language, we involuntarily try to form the sounds we hear into words that sound more comfortable and familiar to us...What all this amounts to is: we are, from the bottom up and across the ages, used to lying. Or, to put the point more virtuously, more hypocritically and, in short, more pleasantly: people are much more artistic than they think. The more abstract the truth you want to teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it. The time for petty politics is over: the next century will bring the struggle for the domination of the earth
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 – howcould 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? Independence is an issue that concerns very few people: –it is a prerogative of the strong. And even when somebody has every right to be independent, if he attempts such a thing without having to do so, he proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness Let us admit this much: that life could not exist
except on the basis of perspectival valuations and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and inanity of many philosophers, someone wanted to completely abolish the “world of appearances,” – well, assuming you could do that, – at least there would not be any of your “truth” left either! Actually, why do we even assume that “true” and “false” are intrinsically opposed? We have to test ourselves to see whether we are destined for independence and command, and we have to do it at the right time. We should not sidestep our tests, even though they may well be the most dangerous game we can play, and, in the last analysis, can be witnessed by no judge other than ourselves. As humanity’s spiritual vision and insight grows stronger, the distance and, as it were, the space that surrounds us increases as well; our world gets more profound, and new stars, new riddles and images are constantly coming into view. -
To love humanity for the sake of God – that has been the noblest and most bizarre feeling people have attained so far. That the love of humanity, in the absence of any sanctifying ulterior motive, is one more stupidity and abomination; that the tendency to love humanity like this can only get its standard, its subtlety, its grain of salt and pinch of ambergris from a higher tendency: – whoever it was that first felt and “experienced” all this, however much his tongue might have stumbled as it tried to express such a tenderness, let him be forever holy and admirable to us as the man who has flown the highest so far and has got the most beautifully lost! for the common people, the great majority, who exist and are only allowed to exist to serve and to be of general utility, religion gives them an invaluable sense of contentment with their situation and type; it puts their hearts greatly at ease, it glorifies their obedience, it gives them (and those like them) one more happiness and one more sorrow, it transfigures and improves them, it provides something of a justification for
everything commonplace, for all the lowliness, for the whole half-bestial poverty of their souls. Religion, and the meaning religion gives to life, spreads sunshine over such eternally tormented people and makes them bearable even to themselves virtue, art, music, dance, reason, intellect – something that transfigures, something refined, fantastic, and divine. The long un-freedom of spirit, the mistrustful constraint in the communicability of thought, the discipline that thinkers imposed on themselves, thinking within certain guidelines imposed by the church or court or Aristotelian presuppositions, the long, spiritual will to interpret every event according to a Christian scheme and to rediscover and justify the Christian God in every chance event, – all this violence, arbitrariness, harshness, terror, and anti-reason has shown itself to be the means through which strength, reckless curiosity, and subtle agility have been bred ... this also entailed an irreplaceable loss of force and spirit, which have had to be crushed, stifled, and ruined
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. Beginning his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy, he became the youngest-ever occupant of the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at age 24. Nietzsche's body of writing spanned philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, aphorism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for metaphor and irony. His thought drew variously on philosophy, art, history, religion, and science, and engaged with a wide range of subjects including morality, metaphysics, language, epistemology, value, aesthetics, and consciousness. His later work, which saw him develop influential (and frequently misunderstood) concepts became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome social, cultural, and moral contexts toward a state of aesthetic health In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche accuses past philosophers of lacking critical sense and blindly accepting dogmatic premises in their consideration of morality. Specifically, he accuses them of founding grand metaphysical systems upon the faith that the good man is the opposite of the evil man, rather than just a different expression of the same basic impulses that find more direct expression in the evil man. The work moves into the realm "beyond good and evil" in the sense of leaving behind the traditional morality which Nietzsche subjects to a destructive critique in favour of what he regards as an affirmative approach that fearlessly confronts the perspectival nature of knowledge and the perilous condition of the modern individual. -taken from wikipedia all other quotes from "Beyond Good and Evil" available in whole on the internet
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