THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Or, How to Philosophise with the Hammer
THE ANTICHRIST
_NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA, AND ETERNAL RECURRENCE_
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
Edited by Dr Oscar Levy
Volume Sixteen
T.N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1911
CONTENTS
TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
PREFACE
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
“REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY
HOW THE “TRUE WORLD” ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE
MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE
THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS
THE “IMPROVERS” OF MANKIND
THINGS THE GERMANS LACK
SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE ACT
THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS
THE ANTICHRIST
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
NOTES TO ZARATHUSTRA
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
_The Twilight of the Idols_ was written towards the end of the summer
of 1888, its composition seems to have occupied only a few days,—so
few indeed that, in _Ecce Homo_ (p. 118), Nietzsche says he hesitates
to give their number; but, in any case, we know it was completed on the
3rd of September in Sils Maria. The manuscript which was dispatched to
the printers on the 7th of September bore the title: “_Idle Hours of a
Psychologist_”; this, however, was abandoned in favour of the present
title, while the work was going through the press. During September
and the early part of October 1888, Nietzsche added to the original
contents of the book by inserting the whole section entitled “Things
the Germans Lack,” and aphorisms 32-43 of “Skirmishes in a War with the
Age”; and the book, as it now stands, represents exactly the form in
which Nietzsche intended to publish it in the course of the year 1889.
Unfortunately its author was already stricken down with illness when
the work first appeared at the end of January 1889, and he was denied
the joy of seeing it run into nine editions, of one thousand each,
before his death in 1900.
Of _The Twilight of the Idols,_ Nietzsche says in _Ecce Homo_ (p.
118):—“If anyone should desire to obtain a rapid sketch of how
everything before my time was standing on its head, he should begin
reading me in this book. That which is called ‘Idols’ on the title-page
is simply the old truth that has been believed in hitherto. In plain
English, _The Twilight of the Idols_ means that the old truth is on its
last legs.”
Certain it is that, for a rapid survey of the whole of Nietzsche’s
doctrine, no book, save perhaps the section entitled “Of Old and New
Tables” in _Thus Spake Zarathustra,_ could be of more real value than
_The Twilight of the Idols._ Here Nietzsche is quite at his best. He
is ripe for the marvellous feat of the transvaluation of all values.
Nowhere is his language—that marvellous weapon which in his hand
became at once so supple and so murderous—more forcible and more
condensed. Nowhere are his thoughts more profound. But all this does
not by any means imply that this book is the easiest of Nietzsche’s
works. On the contrary, I very much fear that, unless the reader is
well prepared, not only in Nietzscheism, but also in the habit of
grappling with uncommon and elusive problems, a good deal of the
contents of this work will tend rather to confuse than to enlighten
him in regard to what Nietzsche actually wishes to make clear in these
pages.
How much prejudice, for instance, how many traditional and deep-seated
opinions, must be uprooted, if we are to see even so much as an
important note of interrogation in the section entitled “The Problem
of Socrates”—not to speak of such sections as “Morality as the Enemy
of Nature,” “The Four Great Errors,” &c. The errors exposed in these
sections have a tradition of two thousand years behind them; and only a
fantastic dreamer could expect them to be eradicated by a mere casual
study of these pages. Indeed, Nietzsche himself looked forward only to
a gradual change in the general view of the questions he discussed; he
knew only too well what the conversion of “light heads” was worth, and
what kind of man would probably be the first to rush into his arms;
and, grand psychologist that he was, he guarded himself beforehand
against bad company by means of his famous warning:—“The first
adherents of a creed do not prove anything against it.”
To the aspiring student of Nietzsche, however, it ought not to be
necessary to become an immediate convert in order to be interested in
the treasure of thought which Nietzsche here lavishes upon us. For
such a man it will be quite difficult enough to regard the questions
raised in this work as actual problems. Once, however, he has succeeded
in doing this, and has given his imagination time to play round these
questions _as_ problems, the particular turn or twist that Nietzsche
gives to their elucidation, may then perhaps strike him, not only as
valuable, but as absolutely necessary.
With regard to the substance of _The Twilight of the Idols,_ Nietzsche
says in _Ecce Homo_ (p. 119):—“There is the waste of an all-too-rich
autumn in this book: you trip over truths. You even crush some to
death, there are too many of them.”
And what are these truths? They are things that are not yet held to
be true. They are the utterances of a man who, as a single exception,
escaped for a while the general insanity of Europe, with its blind
idealism in the midst of squalor, with its unscrupulous praise of
so-called “Progress” while it stood knee-deep in the belittlement
of “Man,” and with its vulgar levity in the face of effeminacy and
decay;—they are the utterances of one who voiced the hopes, the
aims, and the realities of another world, not of an ideal world, not
of a world beyond, but of a real world, of _this_ world regenerated
and reorganised upon a sounder, a more virile, and a more orderly
basis,—in fact, of a perfectly _possible_ world, one that has already
existed in the past, and could exist again, if only the stupendous
revolution of a transvaluation of all values were made possible.
This then is the nature of the truths uttered by this one sane man in
the whole of Europe at the end of last century; and when, owing to his
unequal struggle against the overwhelming hostile forces of his time,
his highly sensitive personality was at last forced to surrender itself
to the enemy and become one with them—that is to say, insane!—at
least the record of his sanity had been safely stored away, beyond the
reach of time and change, in the volumes which constitute his life-work.
* * * * *
Nietzsche must have started upon the “Antichrist,” immediately after
having dispatched the “Idle Hours of a Psychologist” to the printers,
and the work appears to have been finished at the end of September
1888. It was intended by Nietzsche to form the first book of a large
work entitled “The Transvaluation of all Values”; but, though this work
was never completed, we can form some idea from the substance of the
“Antichrist” and from the titles of the remaining three books, which
alas! were never written, of what its contents would have been. These
titles are:—Book II. The Free Spirit. A Criticism of Philosophy as a
Nihilistic Movement. Book III. The Immoralist. A Criticism of the most
Fatal Kind of Ignorance,—Morality. Book IV. Dionysus. The Philosophy
of Eternal Recurrence.
Nietzsche calls this book “An Attempted Criticism of Christianity.”
Modest as this sub-title is, it will probably seem not quite modest
enough to those who think that Nietzsche fell far short of doing
justice to their Holy Creed. Be this as it may, there is the solution
of a certain profound problem in this book, which, while it is the key
to all Nietzscheism, is also the justification and the sanctification
of Nietzsche’s cause. The problem stated quite plainly is this: “_To
what end_ did Christianity avail itself of falsehood?”
Many readers of this amazing little work, who happen to be acquainted
with Nietzsche’s doctrine of Art and of Ruling, will probably feel
slightly confused at the constant deprecation of falsehood, of
deception, and of arbitrary make-believe, which seems to run through
this book like a litany in praise of a certain Absolute Truth.
Remembering Nietzsche’s utterance in volume ii. (p. 26) of the _Will
to Power,_ to wit:—“The prerequisite of all living things and of
their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that
it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and
that there should be no doubt at all concerning values. Thus it is
necessary that something should be assumed to be true, _not_ that it
is true;”—remembering these words, as I say, the reader may stand
somewhat aghast before all those passages in the second half of this
volume, where the very falsehoods of Christianity, its assumptions, its
unwarrantable claims to Truth, are declared to be pernicious, base and
corrupt.
Again and again, if we commit the error of supposing that Nietzsche
believed in a truth that was absolute, we shall find throughout his
works reasons for charging him with apparently the very same crimes
that he here lays at the door of Christianity. What then is the
explanation of his seeming inconsistency?
It is simple enough. Nietzsche’s charge of falsehood against
Christianity is not a moral one,—in fact it may be taken as a general
rule that Nietzsche scrupulously avoids making moral charges, and that
he emains throughout faithful to his position Beyond Good and Evil
(see, for instance Aph. 6 (Antichrist) where he repudiates all moral
prejudice in charging humanity with corruption). A man who maintained
that “truth is that form of error which enables a particular species to
prevail,” could not make a _moral_ charge of falsehood against any one,
or any institution; but he could do so from another standpoint He could
well say, for instance, “falsehood is that kind of error which causes a
particular species to degenerate and to decay.”
Thus the fact that Christianity “lied” becomes a subject of alarm
to Nietzsche, not owing to the fact that it is immoral to lie, but
because in this particular instance, the lie was harmful, hostile to
life, and dangerous to humanity; for “a belief might be false and yet
life-preserving” (_Beyond Good and Evil,_ pp. 8, 9).
Suppose, therefore, we say with Nietzsche that there is no absolute
truth, but that all that has been true in the past which has been
the means of making the “plant man flourish best”—or, since the
meaning of “best” is open to some debate, let us say, flourish in a
Nietzschean sense, that is to say, thanks to a mastery of life, and
to a preponderance of all those qualities which say yea to existence,
and which suggest no flight from this world and all its pleasure and
pain. And suppose we add that, wherever we may find the plant man
flourishing, in this sense, we should there suspect the existence of
truth?—I If we say this with Nietzsche, any sort of assumption or
arbitrary valuation which aims at a reverse order of things, becomes a
dangerous lie in a super-moral and purely physiological sense.
With these preparatory remarks we are now prepared to read aphorism
56 with a complete understanding of what Nietzsche means, and
to recognise in this particular aphorism the key to the whole of
Nietzsche’s attitude towards Christianity. It is at once a solution of
our problem, and a justification of its author’s position. Naturally,
it still remains open to Nietzsche’s opponents to argue, if they
choose, that man has flourished best under the sway of nihilistic
religions—religions which deny life,—and that consequently the
falsehoods of Christianity are not only warrantable but also in the
highest degree blessed; but, in any case, the aphorism in question
completely exonerates Nietzsche from a charge of inconsistency in the
use of the terms “truth” and “falsehood” throughout his works, and
it moreover settles once and for all the exact altitude from which
our author looked down upon the religions of the world, not only to
criticise them, but also to _place_ them in the order of their merit as
disciplinary systems aiming at the cultivation of particular types of
men.
Nietzsche says in aphorism 56:—“After all, the question is, to what
end are falsehoods perpetrated? The fact that, in Christianity, ‘holy’
ends are entirely absent, constitutes _my_ objection to the means it
employs. Its ends are only _bad_ ends: the poisoning, the calumniation
and the denial of life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and
self-pollution of man by virtue of the concept sin,—consequently its
means are bad as well.”
Thus, to repeat it once more, it is not because Christianity availed
itself of all kinds of lies that Nietzsche condemns it; for the Book
of Manu—which he admires—is just as full of falsehood as the Semitic
Book of Laws; but, in the Book of Manu the lies are calculated to
preserve and to create a strong and noble type of man, whereas in
Christianity the opposite type was the aim,—an aim which has been
achieved in a manner far exceeding even the expectations of the
faithful.
This then is the main argument of the book and its conclusion; but, in
the course of the general elaboration of this argument, many important
side-issues are touched upon and developed, wherein Nietzsche reveals
himself as something very much more valuable than a mere iconoclast.
Of course, on every page of his philosophy,—whatever his enemies may
maintain to the contrary,—he never once ceases to construct, since he
is incessantly enumerating and emphasising those qualities and types
which he fain would rear, as against those he fain would see destroyed;
but it is in aphorism 57 of this book that Nietzsche makes the
plainest and most complete statement of his actual taste in Sociology,
and it is upon this aphorism that all his followers and disciples will
ultimately have to build, if Nietzscheism is ever to become something
more than a merely intellectual movement.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
PREFACE
To maintain a cheerful attitude of mind in the midst of a gloomy and
exceedingly responsible task, is no slight artistic feat. And yet, what
could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing ever succeeds which
exuberant spirits have not helped to produce. Surplus power, alone,
is the proof of power.—A _transvaluation of all values,_—this note
of interrogation which is so black, so huge, that it casts a shadow
even upon him who affixes it,—is a task of such fatal import, that
he who undertakes it is compelled every now and then to rush out into
the sunlight in order to shake himself free from an earnestness that
becomes crushing, far too crushing. This end justifies every means,
every event on the road to it is a windfall. Above all _war._ War has
always been the great policy of all spirits who have penetrated too
far into themselves or who have grown too deep; a wound stimulates the
recuperative powers. For many years, a maxim, the origin of which I
withhold from learned curiosity, has been my motto:
_ increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus._
At other times another means of recovery which is even more to my
taste, is to cross-examine idols. There are more idols than realities
in the world: this constitutes my “evil eye” for this world: it is
also my “evil ear.” To put questions in this quarter with a hammer, and
to hear perchance that well-known hollow sound which tells of blown-out
frogs,—what a joy this is for one who has ears even behind his ears,
for an old psychologist and Pied Piper like myself in whose presence
precisely that which would fain be silent, _must betray itself._
Even this treatise—as its title shows—is above all a recreation,
a ray of sunshine, a leap sideways of a psychologist in his leisure
moments. Maybe, too, a new war? And are we again cross-examining new
idols? This little work is a great declaration of war; and with regard
to the cross-examining of idols, this time it is not the idols of the
age but eternal idols which are here struck with a hammer as with
a tuning fork,—there are certainly no idols which are older, more
convinced, and more inflated. Neither are there any more hollow. This
does not alter the fact that they are believed in more than any others,
besides they are never called idols,—at least, not the most exalted
among their number.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
TURIN, the 30th _September_ 1888.
on the day when the first
book of the Transvaluation
of all Values was finished.
MAXIMS AND MISSILES
1
Idleness is the parent of all psychology. What? Is psychology then
a—vice?
2
Even the pluckiest among us has but seldom the courage of what he
really knows.
3
Aristotle says that in order to live alone, a man must be either an
animal or a god. The third alternative is lacking: a man must be
both—a _philosopher._
4
“All truth is simple.”—Is not this a double lie?
5
Once for all I wish to be blind to many things.—Wisdom sets bounds
even to knowledge.
6
A man recovers best from his exceptional nature—his
intellectuality—by giving his animal instincts a chance.
7
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of
man?
8
_From the military school of life._—That which does not kill me, makes
me stronger.
9
Help thyself, then everyone will help thee. A principle of
neighbour-love.
10
A man should not play the coward to his deeds. He should not repudiate
them once he has performed them. Pangs of conscience are indecent.
11
Can a donkey be tragic?—To perish beneath a load that one can neither
bear nor throw off? This is the case of the Philosopher.
12
If a man knows the wherefore of his existence, then the manner of it
can take care of itself. Man does not aspire to happiness; only the
Englishman does that.
13
Man created woman—out of what? Out of a rib of his god,—of his
“ideal.”
14
What? Art thou looking for something? Thou wouldst fain multiply
thyself tenfold, a hundredfold? Thou seekest followers? Seek ciphers!
15
Posthumous men, like myself, are not so well understood as men who
reflect their age, but they are heard with more respect. In plain
English: we are never understood—hence our authority.
16
_Among women._—“Truth? Oh, you do not know truth! Is it not an outrage
on all our _pudeurs?_”—
17
There is an artist after my own heart, modest in his needs: he really
wants only two things, his bread and his art—_panem et Circem._
18
He who knows not how to plant his will in things, at least endows them
with some meaning: that is to say, he believes that a will is already
present in them. (A principle of faith.)
19
What? Ye chose virtue and the heaving breast, and at the same time
ye squint covetously at the advantages of the unscrupulous.—But
with virtue ye renounce all “advantages” ... (to be nailed to an
Antisemite’s door).
20
The perfect woman perpetrates literature as if it were a petty vice: as
an experiment, _en passant,_ and looking about her all the while to
see whether anybody is noticing her, hoping that somebody _is_ noticing
her.
21
One should adopt only those situations in which one is in no need of
sham virtues, but rather, like the tight-rope dancer on his tight rope,
in which one must either fall or stand—or escape.
22
“Evil men have no songs.”[1]—How is it that the Russians have songs?
23
“German intellect”; for eighteen years this has been a _contradictio in
adjecto._
24
By seeking the beginnings of things, a man becomes a crab. The
historian looks backwards: in the end he also _believes_ backwards.
25
Contentment preserves one even from catching cold. Has a woman who knew
that she was well-dressed ever caught cold?—No, not even when she had
scarcely a rag to her back.
26
I distrust all systematisers, and avoid them. The will to a system,
shows a lack of honesty.
27
Man thinks woman profound—why? Because he can never fathom her depths.
Woman is not even shallow.
28
When woman possesses masculine virtues, she is enough to make you run
away. When she possesses no masculine virtues, she herself runs away.
29
“How often conscience had to bite in times gone by! What good teeth it
must have had! And to-day, what is amiss?”—A dentist’s question.
30
Errors of haste are seldom committed singly. The first time a man
always docs too much. And precisely on that account he commits a second
error, and then he does too little.
31
The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus
reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of
morality: Humility.—
32
There is such a thing as a hatred of lies and dissimulation, which is
the outcome of a delicate sense of humour; there is also the selfsame
hatred but as the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is
forbidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie....
33
What trifles constitute happiness! The sound of a bagpipe. Without
music life would be a mistake. The German imagines even God as a
songster.
34
_On ne peut penser et écrire qu’assis_ (G. Flaubert). Here I have got
you, you nihilist! A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy
Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.
35
There are times when we psychologists are like horses, and grow
fretful. We see our own shadow rise and fall before us. The
psychologist must look away from himself if he wishes to see anything
at all.
36
Do we immoralists injure virtue in any way? Just as little as the
anarchists injure royalty. Only since they have been shot at do princes
sit firmly on their thrones once more. Moral: _morality must be shot
at._
37
Thou runnest _ahead?_—Dost thou do so as a shepherd or as an
exception? A third alternative would be the fugitive.... First question
of conscience.
38
Art thou genuine or art thou only an actor? Art thou a representative
or the thing represented, itself? Finally, art thou perhaps simply a
copy of an actor? ... Second question of conscience.
39
_The disappointed man speaks:_—I sought for great men, but all I found
were the apes of their ideal.
40
Art thou one who looks on, or one who puts his own shoulder to the
wheel?—Or art thou one who looks away, or who turns aside?... Third
question of conscience.
41
Wilt thou go in company, or lead, or go by thyself?... A man should
know what he desires, and that he desires something.—Fourth question
of conscience.
42
They were but rungs in my ladder, on them I made my ascent:—to that
end I had to go beyond them. But they imagined that I wanted to lay
myself to rest upon them.
43
What matters it whether I am acknowledged to be right! I am much too
right. And he who laughs best to-day, will also laugh last.
44
The formula of my happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, _goal...._
[1] This is a reference to Seume’s poem “_Die Gesänge_,” the first verse
of which is:—
_“Wo man singet, lass dich ruhig nieder,_
_Ohne Furcht, was man im Lande glaubt_;
_Wo man singet, wird kein Mensch beraubt_:
_Bösewichter haben keine Lieder_.”
(Wherever people sing thou canst safely settle down without a qualm
as to what the general faith of the land may be Wherever people sing,
no man is ever robbed; _rascals_ have no songs.) Popular tradition,
however, renders the lines thus:—
_“Wo man singt, da lass dich ruhig nieder;_
_Base Menschen_ [evil men] _haben keine Lieder.”_
THE PROBLEM OF SOCRATES
1
In all ages the wisest have always agreed in their judgment of life:
_it is no good._ At all times and places the same words have been
on their lips,—words full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of
weariness of life, full of hostility to life. Even Socrates’ dying
words were:—“To live—means to be ill a long while: I owe a cock to
the god Æsculapius.” Even Socrates had had enough of it. What does that
prove? What does it point to? Formerly people would have said (—oh,
it has been said, and loudly enough too; by our Pessimists loudest of
all!): “In any case there must be some truth in this! The _consensus
sapientium_ is a proof of truth.”—Shall we say the same to-day? _May_
we do so? “In any case there must be some sickness here,” we make
reply. These great sages of all periods should first be examined more
closely! Is it possible that they were, everyone of them, a little
shaky on their legs, effete, rocky, decadent? Does wisdom perhaps
appear on earth after the manner of a crow attracted by a slight smell
of carrion?
2
This irreverent belief that the great sages were decadent types, first
occurred to me precisely in regard to that case concerning which both
learned and vulgar prejudice was most opposed to my view. I recognised
Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decline, as instruments in the
disintegration of Hellas, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek (“The Birth
of Tragedy,” 1872). That _consensus sapientium,_ as I perceived ever
more and more clearly, did not in the least prove that they were right
in the matter on which they agreed. It proved rather that these sages
themselves must have been alike in some physiological particular, in
order to assume the same negative attitude towards life—in order to
be bound to assume that attitude. After all, judgments and valuations
of life, whether for or against, cannot be true: their only value lies
in the fact that they are symptoms; they can be considered only as
symptoms,—_per se_ such judgments are nonsense. You must therefore
endeavour by all means to reach out and try to grasp this astonishingly
subtle axiom, _that the value of life cannot be estimated._ A living
man cannot do so, because he is a contending party, or rather the very
object in the dispute, and not a judge; nor can a dead man estimate
it—for other reasons. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value
of life, is almost an objection against him, a note of interrogation
set against his wisdom—a lack of wisdom. What? Is it possible that all
these great sages were not only decadents, but that they were not even
wise? Let me however return to the problem of Socrates.
3
To judge from his origin, Socrates belonged to the lowest of the low:
Socrates was mob. You know, and you can still see it for yourself,
how ugly he was. But ugliness, which in itself is an objection, was
almost a refutation among the Greeks. Was Socrates really a Greek?
Ugliness is not infrequently the expression of thwarted development,
or of development arrested by crossing. In other cases it appears
as a decadent development. The anthropologists among the criminal
specialists declare that I the typical criminal is ugly: _monstrum
in fronte, monstrum in animo._ But the criminal is a decadent?[1]
Was Socrates a typical criminal?—At all events this would not clash
with that famous physiognomist’s judgment which was so repugnant to
Socrates’ friends. While on his way through Athens a certain foreigner
who was no fool at judging by looks, told Socrates to his face that
he was a monster, that his body harboured all the worst vices and
passions. And Socrates replied simply: “You know me, sir!”—
4
Not only are the acknowledged wildness and anarchy of Socrates’
instincts indicative of decadence, but also that preponderance of the
logical faculties and that malignity of the misshapen which was his
special characteristic. Neither should we forget those aural delusions
which were religiously interpreted as “the demon of Socrates.”
Everything in him is exaggerated, _buffo,_ caricature, his nature is
also full of concealment, of ulterior motives, and of underground
currents. I try to understand the idiosyncrasy from which the Socratic
equation:—Reason = Virtue = Happiness, could have arisen: the
weirdest equation ever seen, and one which was essentially opposed to
all the instincts of the older Hellenes.
5
With Socrates Greek taste veers round in favour of dialectics: what
actually occurs? In the first place a noble taste is vanquished:
with dialectics the mob comes to the top. Before Socrates’ time,
dialectical manners were avoided in good society: they were regarded
as bad manners, they were compromising. Young men were cautioned
against them. All such proffering of one’s reasons was looked upon with
suspicion. Honest things like honest men do not carry their reasons
on their sleeve in such fashion. It is not good form to make a show
of everything. That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.
Wherever authority still belongs to good usage, wherever men do not
prove but command, the dialectician is regarded as a sort of clown.
People laugh at him, they do not take him seriously. Socrates was a
clown who succeeded in making men take him seriously: what then was the
matter?
6
A man resorts to dialectics only when he has no other means to hand.
People know that they excite suspicion with it and that it is not
very convincing. Nothing is more easily dispelled than a dialectical
effect: this is proved by the experience of every gathering in which
discussions are held. It can be only the last defence of those who have
no other weapons. One must require to extort one’s right, otherwise one
makes no use of it. That is why the Jews were dialecticians. Reynard
the Fox was a dialectician: what?—and was Socrates one as well?
7
Is the Socratic irony an expression of revolt, of mob resentment?
Does Socrates, as a creature suffering under oppression, enjoy his
innate ferocity in the knife-thrusts of the syllogism? Does he wreak
his revenge on the noblemen he fascinates?—As a dialectician a man
has a merciless instrument to wield; he can play the tyrant with it:
he compromises when he conquers with it. The dialectician leaves it to
his opponent to prove that he is no idiot: he infuriates, he likewise
paralyses. The dialectician cripples the intellect of his opponent. Can
it be that dialectics was only a form of revenge in Socrates?
8
I have given you to understand in what way Socrates was able to repel:
now it is all the more necessary to explain how he fascinated.—One
reason is that he discovered a new kind of _Agon,_ and that he was the
first fencing-master in the best circles in Athens. He fascinated by
appealing to the combative instinct of the Greeks,—he introduced a
variation into the contests between men and youths. Socrates was also a
great erotic.
9
But Socrates divined still more. He saw right through his noble
Athenians; he perceived that his case, his peculiar case, was no
exception even in his time. The same kind of degeneracy was silently
preparing itself everywhere: ancient Athens was dying out. And Socrates
understood that the whole world needed him,—his means, his remedy, his
special artifice for self-preservation. Everywhere the instincts were
in a state of anarchy; everywhere people were within an ace of excess:
the _monstrum in animo_ was the general danger. “The instincts would
play the tyrant; we must discover a counter-tyrant who is stronger than
they.” On the occasion when that physiognomist had unmasked Socrates,
and had told him what he was, a crater full of evil desires, the great
Master of Irony let fall one or two words more, which provide the key
to his nature. “This is true,” he said, “but I overcame them all.” How
did Socrates succeed in mastering himself? His case was at bottom only
the extreme and most apparent example of a state of distress which
was beginning to be general: that state in which no one was able to
master himself and in which the instincts turned one against the other.
As the extreme example of this state, he fascinated—his terrifying
ugliness made him conspicuous to every eye: it is quite obvious that he
fascinated still more as a reply, as a solution, as an apparent cure of
this case.
10
When a man finds it necessary, as Socrates did, to create a tyrant out
of reason, there is no small danger that something else wishes to play
the tyrant. Reason was then discovered as a saviour; neither Socrates
nor his “patients” were at liberty to be rational or not, as they
pleased; at that time it was _de rigueur,_ it had become a last shift.
The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought plunges into
reason, betrays a critical condition of things: men were in danger;
there were only two alternatives: either perish or else be absurdly
rational. The moral bias of Greek philosophy from Plato onward, is the
outcome of a pathological condition, as is also its appreciation of
dialectics. Reason = Virtue = Happiness, simply means: we must imitate
Socrates, and confront the dark passions permanently with the light
of day—the light of reason. We must at all costs be clever, precise,
clear: all yielding to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads
downwards.
11
I have now explained how Socrates fascinated: he seemed to be a
doctor, a Saviour. Is it necessary to expose the errors which lay in
his faith in “reason at any price”?—It is a piece of self-deception
on the part of philosophers and moralists to suppose that they can
extricate themselves from degeneration by merely waging war upon it.
They cannot thus extricate themselves; that which they choose as a
means, as the road to salvation, is in itself again only an expression
of degeneration—they only modify its mode of manifesting itself:
they do not abolish it. Socrates was a misunderstanding. _The whole
of the morality of amelioration—that of Christianity as well—was
a misunderstanding._ The most blinding light of day: reason at any
price; life made clear, cold, cautious, conscious, without instincts,
opposed to the instincts, was in itself only a disease, another kind
of disease—and by no means a return to “virtue,” to “health,” and to
happiness. To be obliged to fight the instincts—this is the formula of
degeneration: as long as life is in the ascending line, happiness is
the same as instinct.
12
—Did he understand this himself, this most intelligent of
self-deceivers? Did he confess this to himself in the end, in the
wisdom of his courage before death. Socrates wished to die. Not Athens,
but his own hand gave him the draught of hemlock; he drove Athens to
the poisoned cup. “Socrates is not a doctor,” he whispered to himself,
“death alone can be a doctor here.... Socrates himself has only been ill
a long while.”
[1] It should be borne in mind that Nietzsche recognised two types of
criminals,—the criminal from strength, and the criminal from weakness.
This passage alludes to the latter, Aphorism 45, p. 103, alludes to the
former.—TR.
“REASON” IN PHILOSOPHY
1
You ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers? ... For instance
their lack of the historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of
Becoming, their Egyptianism. They imagine that they do honour to a
thing by divorcing it from history _sub specie æterni,—_when they
make a mummy of it. All the ideas that philosophers have treated for
thousands of years, have been mummied concepts; nothing real has ever
come out of their hands alive. These idolaters of concepts merely
kill and stuff things when they worship,—they threaten the life of
everything they adore. Death, change, age, as well as procreation and
growth, are in their opinion objections,—even refutations. That which
is cannot evolve; that which evolves _is_ not. Now all of them believe,
and even with desperation, in Being. But, as they cannot lay hold of
it, they try to discover reasons why this privilege is withheld from
them. “Some merely apparent quality, some deception must be the cause
of our not being able to ascertain the nature of Being: where is the
deceiver?” “We have him,” they cry rejoicing, “it is sensuality!” These
senses, _which in other things are so immoral,_ cheat us concerning the
true world. Moral: we must get rid of the deception of the senses, of
Becoming, of history, of falsehood.—History is nothing more than the
belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood. Moral: we must say “no”
to everything in which the senses believe: to all the rest of mankind:
all that belongs to the “people.” Let us be philosophers, mummies,
monotono-theists, grave-diggers!—And above all, away with the _body,_
this wretched _idée fixe_ of the senses, infected with all the faults
of logic that exist, refuted, even impossible, although it be impudent
enough to pose as if it were real!
2
With a feeling of great reverence I except the name of _Heraclitus._
If the rest of the philosophic gang rejected the evidences of the
senses, because the latter revealed a state of multifariousness and
change, he rejected the same evidence because it revealed things as if
they possessed permanence and unity. Even Heraclitus did an injustice
to the senses. The latter lie neither as the Eleatics believed them
to lie, nor as he believed them to lie,—they do not lie at all. The
interpretations we give to their evidence is what first introduces
falsehood into it; for instance the lie of unity, the lie of matter,
of substance and of permanence. Reason is the cause of our falsifying
the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show us a state
of Becoming, of transiency, and of change, they do not lie. But in
declaring that Being was an empty illusion, Heraclitus will remain
eternally right. The “apparent” world is the only world: the “true
world” is no more than a false adjunct thereto.
3
And what delicate instruments of observation we have in our senses!
This human nose, for instance, of which no philosopher has yet spoken
with reverence and gratitude, is, for the present, the most finely
adjusted instrument at our disposal: it is able to register even such
slight changes of movement as the spectroscope would be unable to
record. Our scientific triumphs at the present day extend precisely
so far as we have accepted the evidence of our senses,—as we have
sharpened and armed them, and learned to follow them up to the
end. What remains is abortive and not yet science—that is to say,
metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology, or formal science, or
a doctrine of symbols, like logic and its applied form mathematics.
In all these things reality does not come into consideration at all,
even as a problem; just as little as does the question concerning the
general value of such a convention of symbols as logic.
4
The other idiosyncrasy of philosophers is no less dangerous; it
consists in confusing the last and the first things. They place that
which makes its appearance last—unfortunately! for it ought not
to appear at all!—the “highest concept,” that is to say, the most
general, the emptiest, the last cloudy streak of evaporating reality,
at the beginning as the beginning. This again is only their manner of
expressing their veneration: the highest thing must not have grown out
of the lowest, it must not have grown at all.... Moral: everything
of the first rank must be _causa sui._ To have been derived from
something else, is as good as an objection, it sets the value of a
thing in question. All superior values are of the first rank, all the
highest concepts—that of Being, of the Absolute, of Goodness, of
Truth, and of Perfection; all these things cannot have been evolved,
they must therefore be _causa sui._ All these things cannot however be
unlike one another, they cannot be opposed to one another. Thus they
attain to their stupendous concept “God.” The last, most attenuated and
emptiest thing is postulated as the first thing, as the absolute cause,
as _ens realissimum._ Fancy humanity having to take the brain diseases
of morbid cobweb-spinners seriously!—And it has paid dearly for having
done so.
5
—Against this let us set the different manner in which we (—you
observe that I am courteous enough to say “we”) conceive the problem of
the error and deceptiveness of things. Formerly people regarded change
and evolution in general as the proof of appearance, as a sign of the
fact that something must be there that leads us astray. To-day, on
the other hand, we realise that precisely as far as the rational bias
forces us to postulate unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause,
materiality and being, we are in a measure involved in error, driven
necessarily to error; however certain we may feel, as the result of a
strict examination of the matter, that the error lies here. It is just
the same here as with the motion of the sun: In its case it was our
eyes that were wrong; in the matter of the concepts above mentioned it
is our language itself that pleads most constantly in their favour.
In its origin language belongs to an age of the most rudimentary
forms of psychology: if we try to conceive of the first conditions of
the metaphysics of language, _i.e._ in plain English, of reason, we
immediately find ourselves in the midst of a system of fetichism. For
here, the doer and his deed are seen in all circumstances, will is
believed in as a cause in general; the ego is taken for granted, the
ego as Being, and as substance, and the faith in the ego as substance
is projected into all things—in this way, alone, the concept “thing”
is created. Being is thought into and insinuated into everything as
cause; from the concept “ego,” alone, can the concept “Being” proceed.
At the beginning stands the tremendously fatal error of supposing the
will to be something that actuates,—a faculty. Now we know that it
is only a word.[1] Very much later, in a world a thousand times more
enlightened, the assurance, the subjective certitude, in the handling
of the categories of reason came into the minds of philosophers as a
surprise. They concluded that these categories could not be derived
from experience,—on the contrary, the whole of experience rather
contradicts them. _Whence do they come therefore?_ In India, as in
Greece, the same mistake was made: “we must already once have lived
in a higher world (—instead of in a much lower one, which would have
been the truth!), we must have been divine, for we possess reason!”
... Nothing indeed has exercised a more simple power of persuasion
hitherto than the error of Being, as it was formulated by the Eleatics
for instance: in its favour are every word and every sentence that we
utter!—Even the opponents of the Eleatics succumbed to the seductive
powers of their concept of Being. Among others there was Democritus in
his discovery of the atom. “Reason” in language!—oh what a deceptive
old witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as
we still believe in grammar.
6
People will feel grateful to me if I condense a point of view, which
is at once so important and so new, into four theses: by this means
I shall facilitate comprehension, and shall likewise challenge
contradiction.
_Proposition One._ The reasons upon which the apparent nature of “this”
world have been based, rather tend to prove its reality,—any other
kind of reality defies demonstration.
_Proposition Two._ The characteristics with which man has endowed
the “true Being” of things, are the characteristics of non-Being, of
_nonentity._ The “true world” has been erected upon a contradiction of
the real world; and it is indeed an apparent world, seeing that it is
merely a _moralo-optical_ delusion.
_Proposition Three._ There is no sense in spinning yarns about another
world, provided, of course, that we do not possess a mighty instinct
which urges us to slander, belittle, and cast suspicion upon this life:
in this case we should be avenging ourselves on this life with the
phantasmagoria of “another,” of a “better” life.
_Proposition Four._ To divide the world into a “true” and an “apparent”
world, whether after the manner of Christianity or of Kant (after all
a Christian in disguise), is only a sign of decadence,—a symptom of
_degenerating_ life. The fact that the artist esteems the appearance
of a thing higher than reality, is no objection to this statement. For
“appearance” signifies once more reality here, but in a selected,
strengthened and corrected form. The tragic artist is no pessimist,—he
says _Yea_ to everything questionable and terrible, he is Dionysian.
[1] Nietzsche here refers to the concept “free will” of the Christians;
this does not mean that there is no such thing as will—that is to say
a powerful determining force from within.—TR.
HOW THE “TRUE WORLD” ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE
THE HISTORY OF AN ERROR
1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of
virtue,—he lives in it, _he is it._
(The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever,
simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition
“I, Plato, am the truth.”)
2. The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to
the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue (“to the sinner who
repents”).
(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more
insidious, more evasive,—It _becomes a woman,_ it becomes
Christian.)
3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot
promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an
obligation, a command.
(At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist
and scepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern,
Königsbergian.)[1]
4. The true world—is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained.
And as unattained it is also _unknown._ Consequently it no longer
comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown
constrain us to?
(The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the
first time. The cock-crow of positivism.)
5. The “true world”—an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that
no longer constrains one to anything,—a useless idea that has become
quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense
and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all
free-spirits kick up a shindy.)
6. We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent
world perhaps?... Certainly not! _In abolishing the true world we have
also abolished the world of appearance!_
(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadows; the end of the
longest error; mankind’s zenith; _Incipit Zarathustra._)
[1] Kant was a native of Königsberg and lived there all his life. Did
Nietzsche know that Kant was simply a Scotch Puritan, whose family had
settled in Germany?
MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE
1
There is a time when all passions are simply fatal in their action,
when they wreck their victims with the weight of their folly,—and
there is a later period, a very much later period, when they marry with
the spirit, when they “spiritualise” themselves. Formerly, owing to the
stupidity inherent in passion, men waged war against passion itself:
men pledged themselves to annihilate it,—all ancient moral-mongers
were unanimous on this point, “_il faut tuer les passions._” The
most famous formula for this stands in the New Testament, in that
Sermon on the Mount, where, let it be said incidentally, things are
by no means regarded _from a height._ It is said there, for instance,
with an application to sexuality: “if thy eye offend thee, pluck it
out”: fortunately no Christian acts in obedience to this precept.
To annihilate the passions and desires, simply on account of their
stupidity, and to obviate the unpleasant consequences of their
stupidity, seems to us to-day merely an aggravated form of stupidity.
We no longer admire those dentists who extract teeth simply in order
that they may not ache again. On the other hand, it will be admitted
with some reason, that on the soil from which Christianity grew, the
idea of the “spiritualisation of passion” could not possibly have been
conceived. The early Church, as everyone knows, certainly did wage war
against the “intelligent,” in favour of the “poor in spirit” In these
circumstances how could the passions be combated intelligently? The
Church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds: its practice,
its “remedy,” is _castration._ It never inquires “how can a desire
be spiritualised, beautified, deified?”—In all ages it has laid the
weight of discipline in the process of extirpation (the extirpation
of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and
revenge).—But to attack the passions at their roots, means attacking
life itself at its source: the method of the Church is hostile to life.
2