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independence and green pasture without which there is no quiet for him to work in, that claim to honor and acknowledgment (whose first and foremost presupposition is recognition and being recognizable -), that sunshine of a good name, that constant seal on his value and his utility which is needed, time and again, in o...
Howevergratefullywemightapproachthe objective spirit - and who hasn't been sick to death at least once of everything subjective, with its damned ipsissimosity ! - nevertheless, in the end we even have to be cautious of our gratitude, and put an end to the exaggerated terms in which people have recently been celebrating...
one of the most expensive tools there is: but he belongs in the hands of someone more powerful. He is only a tool, we will say: he is a mirror ,-he is not an 'end in himself.' The objective man is really a mirror: he is used to subordinating himself in front of anything that wants to be known, without any other pleasur...
forced, his hatred artificial and more like un tour de force , a little piece of vanity and exaggeration. He is sincere only to the extent that he is allowed to be objective: he is 'nature' and 'natural' only in his cheerful totality. His mirror-like soul is forever smoothing itself out; it does not know how to affirm ...
' Je ne m'eprise presque rien ,' he says with Leibniz: that presque should not be overlooked or underestimated! He is no paragon of humanity; he does not go in front of anyone or behind. In general, he puts himself at too great a distance to have any basis for choosing between good or evil. If people have mistaken him ...
When a philosopher these days makes it known that he is not a skeptic, - and I hope that this could be detected in the account of the objective spirit just given - everyone gets upset. People look at him apprehensively, they have so many questions, questions ... in fact, frightened eavesdroppers (and there are crowds o...
better against this type of 'goodwill' - a will to the actual, violent negation of life - than skepticism, the soft, sweet, soothing, poppy flower of skepticism; and even Hamlet is prescribed by physicians today as a protection against 'spirit' and its underground rumblings. 'Aren't people's ears already filled with en...
strengthen and grow, both body and soul lack a center of balance, a center of gravity and the assurance of a pendulum. But what is most profoundly sick and degenerate about such hybrids is the will : they no longer have any sense of independence in decision-making, or the bold feeling of pleasure in willing, - they dou...
licentiously from one branch to another; at other times it is gloomy like a cloud overloaded with question-marks - and often sick to death of its will! Paralysis of the will: where won't you find this cripple today? And often how nicely dressed! How seductively dressed! This illness has the prettiest fancy-dress clothe...
well, the dispersion of the empire into small bodies, and, above all, the introduction of parliamentary nonsense, added to which would be the requirement that every man read his newspaper over breakfast. This is not something I am hoping for. I would prefer the opposite, - I mean the sort of increase in the threat Russ...
would force Europe into choosing to become equally threatening and, specifically, to acquire a single will by means of a new caste that would rule over Europe, a long, terrible will of its own, that could give itself millennia-long goals: - so that the long, spun-out comedy of Europe's petty provincialism and its dynas...
The extent to which the new, warlike age that we Europeans have obviously entered into may, perhaps, also be favorable to the development of another, stronger type of skepticism - for the time being, I would like to restrict my remarks on this matter to a parable that the friends of German history will already understa...
skepticismofaboldmasculinity,whichismostcloselyrelatedtothegenius for war and conquest, and which first entered Germany in the shape of the great Frederick. This skepticism despises and nevertheless appropriates; it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe but does not die out on this account; it gives the ...
An allusion to Kant's claim in the Prolegomena zu einer jeden k unftigen Metaphysik ( Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics )( ) that Hume's empiricism awoke him from the dogmatic slumber of rationalism. Madame de Sta el in her De l'Allemagne ( On Germany )( ). See Goethe's Unterredung mit Napoleon ( Discussion with Na...
So, if something in the image of future philosophers makes us suspect that they will, perhaps, be skeptics (in the sense just mentioned), then it would only indicate some aspect of them and not who they themselves really are. Theycouldbecalledcriticswithequaljustification; and they will certainly be engaged in experime...
parliamentarianism' (although these sorts of conciliatory overtures are said to take place in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory century, even among philosophers). These philosophers of the future will demand (and not only of themselves) critical discipline and every habit that leads to cleanliness a...
like a type of jewel they have on display, - nevertheless, they still do not want to be called critics. They think it is no small disgrace for philosophy these days, when people are so happy to announce: 'Philosophy itself is criticism and critical science - and nothing else whatsoever!' However much all the French and...
I am going to insist that people finally stop mistaking philosophical laborers and scientific men in general for philosophers, - that here, of all places, people be strict about giving 'each his due' and not too much to the one, and much too little to the other. In the course of his education, the genuine philosopher m...
pride or tough will can certainly find satisfaction. But true philosophers are commanders and legislators : they say 'That is how it should be!' they are the ones who first determine the 'where to?' and 'what for?' of people, which puts at their disposal the preliminary labor of all philosophical laborers, all those wh...
It seems increasingly clear to me that the philosopher, being necessarily a person of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has, in every age, been and has needed to be at odds with his today: his enemy has always been the ideal of today. So far, all these extraordinary patrons of humanity who are called philosophers (a...
the hardness and capacity for long-term resolutions must belong to the concept of 'greatness,' in the philosopher's ideal. With equal justice, the opposite doctrine and the ideal of a stupid, self-abnegating, humble, selfless humanity was suited to an opposite age, to an age like the sixteenth century that suffered fro...
It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot be taught: you have to 'know' by experience, - or you should be proud that you do not know it at all. But nowadays everyone talks about things that they cannot experience, and most especially (and most terribly) when it comes to philosophers and philosop...
necessity that does not take a single false step - this is an experience most thinkers and scholars would find unfamiliar and, if someone were to mention it, unbelievable. They think of every necessity as a need, a painstaking having-to-follow and being-forced; and they consider thinking itself as something slow and sl...
his ruling gazes and downward gazes, the feeling of separation from the crowd with its duties and virtues, the genial protection and defense of anything misunderstood and slandered, whether it is god or devil, the pleasure and practice in great justice, the art of command, the expanse of the will, the slow eye that har...
Our virtues? - We probably still have our virtues too, although of course they will not be those trusting and muscular virtues for which we hold our grandfathers in honor - but also slightly at arm's length. We Europeans from the day after tomorrow, we firstborn of the twentieth century, - with all of our dangerous cur...
Just as in the celestial realm, the track of one planet will sometimes be determined by two suns; just as, in certain cases, suns of different colors will shine on a single planet with red light one moment and green light the next, and then strike it again, inundating it with many colors all at once: in the same way, t...
To love your enemies? I think this has been learned quite well: it happens thousands of times these days, in large and small ways; in fact, something even higher and more sublime happens every once in a while - we learn to despise when we love and precisely when we love the most. But all of this is unconscious, noisele...
Watch out for people who put a high value on being credited with moral tact and with subtlety in making moral distinctions! They will never forgive us if they ever make a mistake in front of us (or especially about us), - they will inevitably become our instinctive slanderers and detractors, even if they still remain o...
The French psychologists - and where else are there still psychologists today? - have never grown tired of their bitter and manifold delight in
the betise bourgeoise , somewhat as if ... enough, this reveals something about them. For instance, Flaubert, the good citizen of Rouen, ultimately stopped seeing, hearing, or tasting anything else: this was his brand of self-torture and subtler cruelty. Now - because this is getting boring - I recommend another source...
Moral judgment and condemnation is the favorite revenge of the spiritually limited on those who are less so, as well as a type of compensation for having been slighted by nature, and an opportunity to finally acquire spirit and become refined: - malice spiritualizes. It warms the bottom of their hearts for there to be ...
order of rank in the world among things themselves - and not just among people.
Given the popularity of the term 'disinterested' in praising people these days, we need to be aware (although this might prove dangerous) of what it is that really interests the people and what sorts of things the common man cares truly and deeply about (including educated people and even scholars and, unless I am badl...
'It sometimes happens,' said a moralistic pedant and stickler for detail, 'that I honor and esteem an altruistic person. Not because he is altruistic, however, but because it seems to me that he has the right to help another person at his own expense. Enough, it is always a question of who he is and whothat other is. F...
the waste of a virtue: that is how it seems to me. Every unegoistic morality that considers itself unconditional and is directed toward everyone does not just sin against taste: it is a provocation to sins of omission, and one more temptation under a mask of benevolence - a temptation and injury to precisely the higher...
Whereverpityispreachedthesedays-andifyouarelisteningproperly,no other religion is preached any more - let the psychologist open up his ears. Through all the vanity, through all the noise that this preacher (like all preachers) intrinsically possesses, the psychologist will hear the genuine, rasping, groaning sound of s...
The hybrid mixed man of Europe - a fairly ugly plebeian, all in all absolutely must have a costume: he needs history as a storage closet of costumes. Of course, he notices that nothing really looks right on him, he keeps changing. Just look at these rapid preferences and changes in the masquerade of styles over the cou...
dress up as romantic or classical or Christian or Florentine or Baroque or 'national,' in moribus et artibus : it 'doesn't look good'! But the 'spirit,' and particularly the 'historical spirit,' finds that even this despair is to its own advantage: again and again, a new piece of prehistory or foreign country will be t...
The historical sense (or the ability quickly to guess the rank order of the valuations that a people, a society, an individual has lived by, the 'divinatory instinct' for the connections between these valuations, for the relationship between the authority of values and the authority of effective forces): this historica...
instinct for everything, a taste and tongue for everything: by which it immediately shows itself to be an ignoble sense. For instance, we are enjoying Homer again: knowing how to taste Homer might be our greatest advantage, one that people from a noble culture (such as seventeenth-century Frenchmen, like Saint-Evremond...
to feel, to taste again and love again, what we are fundamentally biased against and almost hostile towards, is just that perfected and newly ripened aspect of every art and culture, the genuinely noble element in works and people, their moment of smooth seas and halcyon self-sufficiency, the gold and the coldness Enor...
Hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, eudamonianism: these are all ways of thinking that measure the value of things according to pleasure and pain , which is to say according to incidental states and trivialities. They are all foreground ways of thinking and naivet'es, and nobody who is conscious of both formative powe...
been the sole cause of every enhancement in humanity so far? The tension that breeds strength into the unhappy soul, its shudder at the sight of great destruction, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, surviving, interpreting, and exploiting unhappiness, and whatever depth, secrecy, whatever masks, spirit, cunning...
We immoralists! - This world as it concerns us , in which we need to love and be afraid, this almost invisible, inaudible world of subtle command, subtle obedience, a world of the 'almost' in every respect, twisted, tricky, barbed, and loving: yes, it is well defended against clumsy spectators and friendly curiosity! W...
love and malice at our disposal, and not get tired of 'perfecting' ourselves in our virtue, the only one we have left: may its glory come to rest like a gilded, blue evening glow of mockery over this aging culture and its dull and dismal seriousness! And if our genuine honesty nevertheless gets tired one day and sighs ...
Youwill have to forgive me for having discovered that all moral philosophy so far has been boring and should be classified as a soporific - and that nothing has done more to spoil 'virtue' for my ears than this tediousness of its advocates; although I would not want to underestimate their general utility. It is quite i...
Things today are the same as they have always been: I don't see anyone in Europe who has (or conveys ) any idea that moral deliberation could be dangerous, insidious, seductive - that it could be disastrous ! Just look at the indefatigable, unavoidable English utilitarians, for example, how awkwardly and honorably they...
grasped, but only an emetic; - that what is right for someone absolutely cannot be right for someone else; that the requirement that there be a single morality for everyone is harmful precisely to the higher men; in short, that there is an order of rank between people, and between moralities as well. They are a modest ...
Mature epochs that have the right to be proud of their humanity are still so full of fear, so full of superstitious fear of the 'cruel and wild beast' (although the pride these more humane ages feel is actually caused by their mastery of this beast), that even obvious truths remain unspoken for centuries, as if by agre...
her will and lets Tristan und Isolde 'wash over her' - what they all enjoy and crave with a mysterious thirst to pour down their throats is 'cruelty,' the spiced drink of the great Circe. We clearly need to drive out the silly psychology of the past; the only thing this psychology was able to teach about cruelty was th...
Perhaps people will not immediately understand what I have said here about a 'fundamental will of the spirit': let me explain. - The commanding element (whatever it is) that is generally called 'spirit' wants to dominate itself and its surroundings, and to feel its domination: it wills simplicity out of multiplicity, i...
intention here is to incorporate new 'experiences,' to classify new things into old classes, - which is to say: it aims at growth, or, more particularly, the feeling of growth, the feeling of increasing strength. This same will is served by an apparently opposite drive of spirit, a suddenly emerging resolution in favor...
people try to talk him out of it! In fact, it would sound more polite if, instead of cruelty, people were to accuse, mutter about and praise us as having a sort of 'wild honesty' - free, very free spirits that we are: - and perhaps this is what our reputation will really be - posthumously? In the meantime - because thi...
of bright opulence. These are beautiful, twinkling, tinkling, festive words: genuine honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, the heroism of truthfulness, - there is something about them that makes you swell with pride. But we hermits and marmots, we convinced ourselves a long time ago and in al...
Natural man. Fate. Beyond Good and Evil start to be called 'convictions.' Later - they come to be seen as only footsteps to self-knowledge, signposts to the problems that we are , - or, more accurately, to the great stupidity that we are, to our spiritual fatum , to that thing 'at the very bottom' that will not learn ....
Women want to become independent, so they are beginning to enlighten men about the 'woman an sich '-this is one of the worst developments in Europe's general trend towards increasing ugliness . Just imagine what these clumsy attempts at female scientificity and self-disclosure will bring to light! Women have so much ca...
herself: - perhaps in order to dominate. But she does not want truth: what does truth matter for a woman! Nothing is so utterly foreign, unfavorable, hostile for women from the very start than truth, - their great art is in lying, their highest concern is appearance and beauty. Let us admit that we men love and honor p...
It shows corruption of the instincts - even apart from the fact that it shows bad taste - when a woman refers specifically to Madame Roland or MadamedeStael or Monsieur Georges Sand, as if that proved something in favor of the 'woman an sich .' Men consider these the three comical women an sich - nothing else! - and pr...
Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the spine-chilling thoughtlessness in the feeding of the family and the head of the house! Women do not understand what food means : and yet want to cook! If woman were a thoughtful creature, then the fact that she has been the cook for thousands of years would surely have led h...
There are phrases and masterstrokes of the spirit, there are aphorisms, a small handful of words, in which an entire culture, an entire society is suddenly crystallized. Madame de Lambert's occasional remark to her son is one of them: ' Mon ami, ne vous permettez jamais que de folies qui vous feront grand plaisir ': - ...
What Dante and Goethe believed about women - the former when he sang ' ella guardava suso, ed io in lei ,' the latter when he translated it as 'the Eternal Feminine draws us upward '-: I have no doubt that any noble woman will object to this belief, since this is just what she believes about the Eternal Masculine.
Seven little maxims about women Suddenly we're bored no more when a man crawls through the door! Age, alas! and science too gives weaker virtues strength anew. Black gowns and a silent guise make any woman look quite - wise. Who to thank for my success? God - and my own tailoress. 'My friend, only allow yourself the fo...
To be wrong about the fundamental problem of 'man and woman'; on the one hand, to deny the most abysmal antagonism and the necessity of an eternally hostile tension; and, on the other hand, to dream, perhaps, of equal rights, equal education, equal entitlements and obligations: thatisa typical sign of a shallow mind, a...
The men of our epoch treat the weaker sex with more respect than any epoch has ever done - this is part of the democratic tendency and fundamental taste, as is a lack of respect for age -: is it any wonder that this respect is immediately misused? People want more, people learn to make demands, people ultimately find t...
in any sort of Eternal or Necessary Feminine; to dissuade men, emphatically and at length, from thinking that women must by kept, cared for, protected, and looked after like gentle, strangely wild and often pleasant house pets; to collect together, in an inept and indignant manner, everything slavish and serflike that ...
incomprehensibility, expanse, and rambling character of their desires and virtues ... What inspires pity, in spite of all the fear, for this dangerous and beautiful cat 'woman' is that she seems to suffer more, be more vulnerable, need more love, and be condemned to more disappointments than any animal. Fear and pity: ...
always with one foot in tragedy which tears you apart even as it delights you -. What? And that brings it to an end? The demystification of women is in progress? Women's tediousness comes slowly into view? Oh Europe, Europe! We are familiar with the horned animal that you always found the most attractive, who kept thre...
I heard it again for the first time - Richard Wagner's overture to Meistersinger : it is magnificent, ornate, heavy, late art that takes pride in presupposing two hundred years of music as still living in order to be comprehensible: - it is a credit to the Germans that this sort of pride is not mistaken! What strengths...
of the word, something multiple, informal and inexhaustible in a German way; a certain German powerfulness and overfullness of the soul that is not afraid to hide behind the refinements of decline (and perhaps this is where it feels best); a fair and fitting emblem of the German soul that is simultaneously young and ob...
We 'good Europeans': even we have hours when we allow ourselves a robust fatherlandishness, a slip and backslide into old loves and confines (I have just given a sample of this), hours of national outbursts, patriotic trepidations, and all sorts of other antiquated floods of affect. But things that run their course in ...
they hadn't got rid of a cautious disgust at the agitation, emptiness, and riotous brawling of truly politicized peoples: - suppose that a statesman like this incites the dormant passions and greed of his people, makes a flaw out of their former shyness and the way they enjoyed staying to the side, makes a fault out of...
Whatever term is used these days to try to mark what is distinctive about the European, whether it is 'civilization' or 'humanization' or 'progress' (or whether, without implying praise or censure, it is simply labeled Europe's democratic movement); behind all the moral and political foregrounds that are indicated by f...
stress of 'national feeling' belongs here, as does the anarchism that is only just approaching. This process will probably end up with results that its naive supporters and eulogists, the apostles of 'modern ideas,' have least expected. The same new conditions that generally lead to a leveling and mediocritization of m...
I'm glad to hear that our sun is moving rapidly towards the constellation of Hercules , and I hope that the people of this earth will act like the sun. With us in front, we good Europeans! -
There was a time when it was customary to call the Germans 'profound,' as a term of distinction. Now that the most successful type of new Germanism desires a completely different sort of honor and has, perhaps, come to regret the absence of a certain 'elan' in everything profound, it is almost timely and patriotic to a...
are about to get rid of, thank God. So: to try to change our ideas about Germanprofundity,all we need is a little vivisection of the German soul. More than anything else, the German soul is multiple, it originates in different places and is more piled up and pieced together than actually constructed: this is due to its...
charm of the mysterious; the German is an expert on Goethe's Faust I, line . Reference to Jean Paul's review of Fichte's Reden an die Deutsche Nation ( Speeches to the German Nation ), in Heidelberger Jahrb ucher ( ). This term is difficult to translate, but suggests a soulful quality or warm-hearted disposition. Beyon...
the secret paths to chaos. And just as everything loves its likeness, the German loves clouds and everything unclear, becoming, nebulous, damp and overcast: he feels that uncertainty, disorganization, displacement, and growth of every type are 'profound.' The German himself is not, he becomes , he 'develops.' 'Developm...
profundity' be what it will (and just between us, perhaps, we will allow ourselves a laugh at its expense?), we would do well to honor its appearance and good name in the future as well, and Before the eyes. In German: Biederkeit . From Goethe's Faust part I, line . not to trade in our old reputation as people of profu...
The 'good old days' are over - they sang themselves out in Mozart. How lucky for us that his Rococo still speaks to us, that his 'good company,' his tender enthusiasms, his childish pleasure in Chinoiserie and fancy flourishes, his courtesy of the heart, his longing for the delicate and the amorous, for dancing and tea...
second-rate music from the very start, and real musicians took little notice of it. Things were different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master who, thanks to his easier, purer, happier soul, was quickly honored and just as quickly forgotten, as a lovely incident in German music. But when it comes to Robert Schum...
- What torture German books are for anyone with a third ear! How reluctantly he stands by the slowly revolving quagmire of toneless tones and rhythms without dance that the Germans call a 'book'! And the Germans who read books! How lazily, how grudgingly, how badly they read! How many Germans know (and require themselv...
meaning of the order of vowels and diphthongs and how tenderly and richly they can change color and change it again when put next to each other - who among book-reading Germans is well-meaning enough to acknowledge duties and demands like these and to listen for so much art and intent in language? In the end, people ju...
Howlittle the German style has to do with tones and with ears is shown by the fact that it is precisely our good musicians who write poorly. Germans do not read aloud, they do not read for the ear but only with the eye, keeping their ears in a drawer in the meantime. When ancient people read, if they read at all (it ha...
in the previous century, when all the men and women of Italy knew how to sing, virtuosity in song (and with it the art of melody too -) reached a high point. But in Germany there was (until very recently, when a sort of grandstand verbosity shyly and awkwardly stirred its young wings) really only one species of public ...
There are two types of genius: one that fundamentally begets and wants to beget, and another that is happy to be impregnated and give birth. Similarly with peoples of genius, there are those who inherit the female problem of pregnancy and the secret task of forming, ripening, and bringing to completion - the Greeks, fo...
Every people has its own tartufferies, and calls them its virtues. You do not know - you cannot know - what is best about yourself. Peoples and fatherlands
What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things both good and bad, but mainly one thing that is both best and worst: the grand style in morality, the horror and majesty of infinite demands, infinite meanings, the whole romanticism and sublimity of the morally questionable - and, consequently, precisely the most appealing, in...
We have to accept the fact that all sorts of clouds and disturbances (basically, small fits of stupefaction) drift over the spirit of a people who suffers and wants to suffer from national nervous fevers and political ambition. With today's Germans, for instance, there is the anti-French stupidity one moment and the an...
be listened to and acted on. 'Don't let in any more Jews! And lock the doors to the east in particular (even to Austria)!' - so commands the instinct of a people whose type is still weak and indeterminate enough to blur easily and be easily obliterated by a stronger race. But the Jews are without a doubt the strongest,...
to throw the anti-Semitic hooligans out of the country. Approached selectively and with all due caution, the way it is done by the English nobility. It would clearly be unproblematic Res facta means 'something made'; res nata means 'something born.' Something fictitious and unreal. More enduring than bronze.
for the stronger and more strongly delineated types of new Germanism (the officers of noble rank from the Mark, for instance) to get involved with them: and it would be very interesting to see whether the genius of fortune and fortitude (and above all some spirit and spiritedness, which are in very short supply in the ...
This is not a philosophical race - these Englishmen. Bacon signified an attack on the philosophical spirit in general; Hobbes, Hume, and Locke indicated a degradation and a depreciation in value of the concept 'philosopher' for more than a century. Kant rose up and rebelled against Hume; anditwasLockeaboutwhomSchelling...
progress in crude peoples; it is a step towards spiritualization. The English crudeness and peasant-like seriousness is most tolerably disguised (or better: explained and reinterpreted) by Christian gestures, prayers, and psalm-singing. And for that herd of drunken and dissipated cows who in the past learned to grunt m...
There are truths best known by mediocre minds, because they are best suited to mediocre minds; there are truths that have a charm and seductive allure only for mediocre spirits. We are coming up against this perhaps unpleasant proposition right now, since the spirit of worthy but mediocre Englishmen - I mean Darwin, Jo...
ordinariness. What people call 'modern ideas' or 'eighteenth-century ideas' or even 'French ideas' - in other words, what the German spirit rebelled against in profound disgust -, was English in origin, there is no doubtaboutit.TheFrenchwerejusttheapesandactors(aswellasthebest soldiers) of these ideas, and unfortunatel...
France is still the seat of the most spiritual and sophisticated culture in Europe today, and the preeminent school of taste: but you have to know how to find this 'France of taste.' People belonging to it keep themselves well hidden: - there might be only a small number of people in which it loves and lives, people wh...
(which is to say: in the form of the foremost living historian), exerts an almost tyrannical influence these days. But as far as Wagner goes, the more French music learns to develop according to the real needs of the ame moderne , the more 'Wagnerianized' it becomes; this can be predicted, - it is already happening now...
There is, in addition, a third claim to superiority: at the core of the French there is a half-successful synthesis of north and south which lets them conceive many things and do many others that will never occur to an Englishman.Usingatemperamentthatisturnedperiodicallytowardsand away from the south, and whose Provenc...
I recommend taking a number of precautions against German music. Suppose that someone loves the south like I do, as an immense school for convalescence of both the most spiritual and the most sensual kind, as an unbridled, sun-drenched, sun-transfiguration that spreads across a high-handed, self-assured existence: such...