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Thanks to the pathological manner in which nationalist nonsense has alienated and continues to alienate the peoples of Europe from each other; thanks as well to the short-sighted and swift-handed politicians who have risen to the top with the help of this nonsense, and have no idea of the extent to which the politics of dissolution that they practice can only be entr'acte politics, - thanks to all this and to some things that are strictly unmentionable today, the most unambiguous signs declaring that Europe wants to be one are either overlooked or willfully and mendaciously reinterpreted. The mysterious labor in the souls of all the more profound andfar-rangingpeopleofthiscenturyhasactuallybeenfocusedonpreparing the path to this new synthesis and on experimentally anticipating the Europeansofthefuture.Onlyintheirforegroundsorinhoursofweakness (like old age) were they 'fatherlanders,' - they only became 'patriots' when they were resting from themselves. I am thinking about people like Napoleon,Goethe,Beethoven,Stendhal,HeinrichHeine,Schopenhauer: and do not blame me for including Richard Wagner as well; we should not let his own self-misunderstanding lead us astray - geniuses of his type do not often have the right to understand themselves. Although, admittedly, it is not so apparent given the rude clamor with which Wagner is resisted and opposed in France today, it nonetheless remains the case that late French romanticism of the ' s and Richard Wagner belong most closely andintimately together. They are related, fundamentally related, in all the heights and depths of their needs: it is the soul of Europe, the one Europe, that presses and yearns upwards and outwards through their multiple and In German: versuchsweise (see note ,p. above). Peoples and fatherlands
tumultuous art - towards what? towards a new light? a new sun? But who could really express something that all these masters of new means of language did not know how to express clearly? What is certain is that the same storm and stress tormented them, that they searched in the same way, these last great seekers! They were all dominated by literature, up to their eyes and ears - the first artists with an education in world literature. For the most part, they were themselves writers, poets, go-betweens and mixers of the arts and the senses (as a musician, Wagner belongs among painters, as a poet, among musicians, as an artist in general, among actors); they were all fanatics of expression 'at any cost' (I emphasize Delacroix, Wagner's next of kin), all of them great discoverers in the realm of the sublime as well as the repugnant and repulsive, even greater discoverers in effects, in showmanship, in the art of window displays; they were all talents far above their genius -, virtuosos through and through, with uncanny accesstoeverythingtempting,seductive,compelling,andsubversive,born enemies of logic and straight lines, longing for the foreign, the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, the self-contradictory. As humans, Tantaluses of the will, plebeians on the rise who knew that they were incapable of a noble tempo, a lento , in their life or work (just consider Balzac, for instance), unconstrained workers, almost destroying themselves with work: antinomians and agitators when it came to customs, ambitious and insatiable without equilibrium or enjoyment; and in the end they all crumbled and sank down in front of the Christian cross (and with complete justification: which one of them would have been profound and original enough for a philosophy of the Antichrist ? -); on the whole, an adventurously daring, splendidly violent, high-flying, high-ascending type of higher men, who first taught their century - and it is the century of the masses ! - the concept 'higher man' ... Let Richard Wagner's German friends decide whether there is something purely German about Wagner's art, or whether it is not distinguished precisely by its derivation from supra-German sources and drives; the extent to which Paris in particular was indispensable for the
cultivation of Wagner's type should not be underestimated (the profundity of his instincts called him to Paris at the decisive moment); nor should the extent to which his whole manner and self-apostolate required the model of the French socialists. Perhaps closer comparison will reveal, to the credit of Richard Wagner's German nature, that he did everything in a stronger, bolder, harder, and higher way than a Frenchman of the nineteenth century could do, - thanks to the fact
that we Germans are still closer to barbarism than the French are. The strangest thing that Richard Wagner created might even be inaccessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the entire, late, Latinate race, forever and not just for now: the figure of Siegfried, that very free man, who may in fact be far too free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too anti-Catholic for the taste of old and worn-out cultures. He might even have been a sin against romanticism, this anti-romantic Siegfried - although Wagner thoroughly atoned for this sin in his sad old age, when (anticipating a taste that has since become political) he began preaching, if not traveling, the way to Rome with a religious vehemence peculiar to himself. - So that you do not misunderstand these final words of mine, I want to use a few strongrhymes;andthenevenlesssubtleearswillguesswhatIwant,-what Ihave against the 'final Wagner' and his Parsifal music. - Is this still German? It's from a German heart, this murky howling? From German flesh this self-aimed disemboweling? It's German then, this type of priestly feel, This incense-scented sensuous appeal? This broken, falling, swaggered swaying? This unassured singsong-saying? This nun-eyed Ave -chiming leavening, This falsely raptured heaven-overheavening? - Is this still German? Just think! You're standing there, the doorway's near, It's Rome! Rome's faith without the text, you hear . Siegfried is the heroic figure of Wagner's mythological Ring der Nibelungen opera cycle. In his final opera, Parsifal , Wagner emphasized more explicitly Christian themes.
Every enhancement so far in the type 'man' has been the work of an aristocratic society - and that is how it will be, again and again, since this sort of society believes in a long ladder of rank order and value distinctions between men, and in some sense needs slavery. Without the pathos of distance as it grows out of the ingrained differences between stations, out of the way the ruling caste maintains an overview and keeps looking down on subservient types and tools, and out of this caste's equally continuous exerciseinobeyingandcommanding,inkeepingawayandbelow-without this pathos, that other , more mysterious pathos could not have grown at all, that demand for new expansions of distance within the soul itself, the development of states that are increasingly high, rare, distant, tautly drawn and comprehensive, and in short, the enhancement of the type 'man,' the constant 'self-overcoming of man' (to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense). Of course, you cannot entertain any humanitarian illusions about how an aristocratic society originates (and any elevation of the type 'man' will presuppose an aristocratic society -): the truth is harsh. Let us not be deceived about how every higher culture on earth has begun ! Men whose nature was still natural, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, predatory people who still possessed an unbroken strength of will and lust for power threw themselves on weaker, more civilized, more peaceful races of tradesmen perhaps, or cattle breeders; or on old and mellow cultures in which the very last life-force was flaring up in brilliant fireworks of spirit and corruption. The noble caste always started out as the barbarian caste. Their supremacy was in psychic, not Beyond Good and Evil physical strength, - they were more complete people (which at any level amounts to saying 'more complete beasts' -).
Corruption, as an expression of the fact that anarchy threatens inside the instincts and that the foundation of the affects, which we call 'life,' has been shaken: corruption means fundamentally different things, depending on the life-form in which it manifests itself. When, for instance, an aristocracy like that in France at the beginning of the Revolution throws away its privileges with a sublime disgust and sacrifices itself to an excess of its moral feeling, then this is corruption. It was really just the final act of that centuries-long corruption in which the aristocracy gradually relinquished its dominant authority and was reduced to a mere function of the kingdom (and, in the end, to its trinket and showpiece). But the essential feature of a good, healthy aristocracy is that it does not feel that it is a function (whether of the kingdom or of the community) but instead feels itself to be the meaning and highest justification (of the kingdom or community), - and, consequently, that it accepts in good conscience the sacrifice of countless people who have to be pushed down and shrunk into incomplete human beings, into slaves, into tools, all for the sake of the aristocracy . Its fundamental belief must always be that society cannot exist for the sake of society, but only as the substructure and framework for raising an exceptional type of being up to its higher duty and to a higher state of being . In the same way, the sun-seeking, Javanese climbing plant called the sipo matador will wrap its arms around an oak tree so often and for such a long time that finally, high above the oak, although still supported by it, the plant will be able to unfold its highest crown of foliage and show its happiness in the full, clear light.
Mutually refraining from injury, violence, and exploitation, placing your will on par with the other's: in a certain, crude sense, these practices can become good manners between individuals when the right conditions are present (namely, that the individuals have genuinely similar quantities of force and measures of value, and belong together within a single body). But as soon as this principle is taken any further, and maybe even
held to be the fundamental principle of society, it immediately shows itself for what it is: the will to negate life, the principle of disintegration and decay. Here we must think things through thoroughly, and ward off any sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially a process of appropriating, injuring, overpowering the alien and the weaker, oppressing, being harsh, imposing your own form, incorporating, and at least, the very least, exploiting, - but what is the point of always using words that have been stamped with slanderous intentions from time immemorial? Even a body within which (as we presupposed earlier) particular individuals treat each other as equal (which happens in every healthy aristocracy): if this body is living and not dying, it will have to treat other bodies in just those ways that the individuals it contains refrain from treating each other. It will have to be the embodiment of will to power, it will want to grow, spread, grab, win dominance, - not out of any morality or immorality, but because it is alive , and because life is precisely will to power. But there is no issue on which the base European consciousness is less willing to be instructed than this; these days, people everywhere are lost in rapturous enthusiasms, even in scientific disguise, about a future state of society where 'the exploitative character' will fall away: - to my ears, that sounds as if someone is promising to invent a life that dispenses with all organic functions. 'Exploitation' does not belong to a corrupted or imperfect, primitive society: it belongs to the essence of being alive as a fundamental organic function; it is a result of genuine will to power, which is just the will of life. - Although this is an innovation at the level of theory, - at the level of reality, it is the primal fact of all history. Let us be honest with ourselves to this extent at least! -
As I was wandering through the many subtle and crude moralities that havebeendominantorthatstilldominateoverthefaceoftheearth,Ifound certain traits regularly recurring together and linked to each other. In the end, two basic types became apparent to me and a fundamental distinction leapt out. There is a master morality and a slave morality ; - I will immediately add that in all higher and more mixed cultures, attempts to negotiate between these moralities also appear, although more frequently the two are confused and there are mutual misunderstandings. In fact, you sometimes find them sharply juxtaposed - inside the same person even, Beyond Good and Evil
within a single soul. Moral value distinctions have arisen within either a dominating type that, with a feeling of well-being, was conscious of the difference between itself and those who were dominated - or alternatively, these distinctions arose among the dominated people themselves, the slaves and dependants of every rank. In the first case, when dominating people determine the concept of 'good,' it is the elevated, proud states of soul that are perceived as distinctive and as determining rank order. The noble person separates himself off from creatures in which the opposite of such elevated, proud states is expressed: he despises them. It is immediately apparent that, in this first type of morality, the contrast between 'good' and 'bad' amounts to one between 'noble' and 'despicable' (the contrast between 'good' and ' evil ' has a different lineage). People who were cowardly, apprehensive, and petty, people who thought narrowly in terms of utility - these were the ones despised. But the same can be said about distrustful people with their uneasy glances, about grovelers, about dog-like types of people who let themselves be mistreated, about begging flatterers and, above all, about liars: - it is a basic belief of aristocrats that base peoples are liars. 'We who are truthful' - that is what the nobility of ancient Greece called themselves. It is obvious that moral expressions everywhere were first applied to people and then, only later and derivatively, to actions (which is why it is a tremendous mistake when historians of morality take their point of departure from questions such as 'why do acts of pity get praised?'). The noble type of person feels that he determines value, he does not need anyone's approval, he judges that 'what is harmful to me is harmful in itself,' he knows that he is the one who gives honor to things in the first place, he creates values .Hehonors everything he sees in himself: this sort of morality is self-glorifying. In the foreground, there is the feeling of fullness, of power that wants to overflow, the happiness associated with a high state of tension, the consciousness of a wealth that wants to make gifts and give away. The noble person helps the unfortunate too, although not (or hardly ever) out of pity, but rather more out of an impulse generated by the over-abundance of power. In honoring himself, the noble man honors the powerful
as well as those who have power over themselves, who know how to speak and be silent, who joyfully exercise severity and harshness over themselves, and have respect for all forms of severity and harshness. 'Wotan has put a hard heart in my breast,' reads a line from an old Scandinavian saga: this rightly comes from the soul of a proud Viking. This sort of a man
is even proud of not being made for pity: which is why the hero of the saga adds, by way of warning, 'If your heart is not hard when you are young, it will never be hard.' The noble and brave types of people who think this way are the furthest removed from a morality that sees precisely pity, actions for others, and d'esint'eressement as emblematic of morality. A faith in yourself, pride in yourself, and a fundamental hostility and irony with respect to 'selflessness' belong to a noble morality just as certainly as does a slight disdain and caution towards sympathetic feelings and 'warm hearts.' - The powerful are the ones who know how to honor; it is their art, their realm of invention. A profound reverence for age and origins - the whole notion of justice is based on this double reverence -, a faith and a prejudice in favor of forefathers and against future generations is typical of the morality of the powerful. And when, conversely, people with 'modern ideas' believe almost instinctively in 'progress' and 'the future,' and show a decreasing respect for age, this gives sufficient evidence of the ignoble origin of these 'ideas.' But, most of all, the morality of dominating types is foreign and painful to contemporary taste due to its stern axiom that people have duties only towards their own kind; that when it comes to creatures of a lower rank, to everything alien, people are allowed to act as they see fit or 'from the heart,' and in any event, 'beyond good and evil' -: things like pity might have a place here. The capacity and duty to experience extended gratitude and vengefulness - both only among your own kind -, subtlety in retaliation, refinement in concepts of friendship, a certain need to have enemies (as flue holes, as it were, for the affects of jealousy, irascibility, arrogance, - basically, in order to be a good friend ): all these are characteristic features of noble morality which, as I have suggested, is not the morality of 'modern ideas,' and this makes it difficult for us to relate to, and also difficult for us to dig it up and lay it open. - It is different with the second type of morality, slave morality . What if people who were violated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, exhausted, and unsure of themselves were to moralize: what type of moral valuations would
they have? A pessimistic suspicion of the whole condition of humanity would probably find expression, perhaps a condemnation of humanity along with its condition. The slave's gaze resents the virtues of the powerful. It is skeptical and distrustful, it has a subtle mistrust of all the 'good' that is honored there -, it wants to convince Disinterestedness. Beyond Good and Evil itself that even happiness is not genuine there. Conversely, qualities that serve to alleviate existence for suffering people are pulled out and flooded with light: pity, the obliging, helpful hand, the warm heart, patience, industriousness, humility, and friendliness receive full honors here -, since these are the most useful qualities and practically the only way of holding up under the pressure of existence. Slave morality is essentially a morality of utility. Here we have the point of origin for that famous opposition between 'good' and ' evil .' Evil is perceived as something powerful and dangerous; it is felt to contain a certain awesome quality, a subtlety and strength that block any incipient contempt. According to the slave morality then, 'evil' inspires fear; but according to the master morality,itis ' good ' that inspires and wants to inspire fear, while the 'bad' man is seen as contemptible. The opposition comes to a head when, following the logic of slave morality, a hint of contempt (however slight and well disposed) finally comes to be associated with even its idea of 'good,' because within the terms of slave morality, the good man must always be unthreatening :he is good-natured, easy to deceive, maybe a bit stupid, unbonhomme . Wherever slave morality holds sway, language shows a tendency for the words 'good' and 'stupid' to come closer together. - A final fundamental distinction: the desire for freedom , the instinct for happiness, and subtleties in the feeling of freedom necessarily belong to slave morals and morality, just as an artistry and enthusiasm in respect and devotion are invariant symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and valuing. - This clearly shows why love as passion (our European specialty) must have had a purely noble descent: it is known to have been invented in the knightly poetry of Provence, by those magnificent, inventive men of the ' gai saber .' Europe is indebted to these men for so many things, almost for itself.
Vanity is perhaps one of the most difficult things for a noble person to comprehend: he will be tempted to keep denying it when a different type of man will almost be able to feel it in his hands. He has difficulty imagining creatures who would try to inspire good opinions about themselves that they themselves do not hold - and consequently do not 'deserve' A good simple fellow. Gay science.
either -, and who would then end up believing these good opinions. For one thing, this strikes the noble as being so tasteless and showing such a lack of self-respect, and, for another thing, it seems so baroque and unreasonable to him, that he would gladly see vanity as an exception and stay skeptical in most of the cases where it is brought up. For example, he will say: 'I can be wrong about my own worth and still insist that other people acknowledge it to be what I say it is, - but that is not vanity (instead, it is arrogance or, more frequently, it is what they call 'humility' or 'modesty').' Or alternatively: 'There are many reasons why I can enjoy other people's good opinions, perhaps because I love and honor them and rejoice in each of their joys, and perhaps also because their good opinions confirm and reinforce my faith in my own good opinion of myself, perhaps because other people's good opinions are useful or look as though they could be useful to me, even when I don't agree with them, - but none of that is vanity.' It is only when forced (namely with the help of history) that the noble person realizes that from time immemorial, in all strata of people who are in some way dependent, base people were only what they were considered to be : - not being at all accustomed to positing values, the only value the base person attributes to himself is the one his masters have attributed to him (creating values is the true right of masters ). We can see it as the result of a tremendous atavism that, to this day, ordinary people still wait for an opinion to be pronounced about themselves before instinctively deferring to it. And this is by no means only the case with 'good' opinions - they defer to bad and unfair ones as well (for instance, just think about most of the self-estimations and self-underestimations that devout women accept from their father confessors and, in general, that devout Christians accept from their church). As a matter of fact, in keeping with the slow approach of a democratic order of things (and its cause, the mixing of blood between masters and slaves), the originally rare and noble urge to ascribe to yourself a value that comes from yourself, and to 'think well' of yourself is now increasingly widespread and encouraged. But in every age it
is opposed by an older, broader, and more thoroughly ingrained tendency, and in the phenomenon of 'vanity,' this older tendency gains mastery over the younger. The vain take pleasure in every good opinion they hear about themselves (abstracted entirely from the point of view of utility, and just as much removed from truth or falsity), just as they suffer from every bad opinion. This is because they submit - they feel submissive - to both good and bad opinions out of that oldest instinct of submissiveness Beyond Good and Evil which erupts within them. - This is 'the slave' in the blood of the vain, a remnant of the mischief of the slave - and how much 'slave' is still left over in women, for instance! -, they try to seduce people into having good opinions of them. By the same token, it is the slave who submits to these opinions immediately afterwards, as if he were not the one who had just called for them. - And to say it again: vanity is an atavism.
A species originates, a type grows sturdy and strong, in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavorable conditions. Conversely, people know from the experience of breeders that species with overabundant diets and, in general, more than their share of protection and care, will immediately show a striking tendency towards variations of the type, and will be rich in wonders and monstrosities (including monstrous vices). You only need to see an aristocratic community (such as Venice or an ancient Greek polis ) as an organization that has been established, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, for the sake of breeding : the people living there together are self-reliant and want to see their species succeed, mainly because if they do not succeed they run a horrible risk of being eradicated. Here there are none of the advantages, excesses, and protections that are favorable to variation. The species needs itself to be a species, to be something that, by virtue of its very hardness, uniformity, and simplicity of form, can succeed and make itself persevere in constant struggle with its neighbors or with the oppressed who are or threaten to become rebellious. A tremendous range of experiences teaches it which qualities are primarily responsible for the fact that, despite all gods and men, it still exists, it keeps prevailing. It calls these qualities virtues, and these are the only virtues it fosters. It does so with harshness; in fact, it desires harshness. Every aristocratic morality is intolerant about the education of the young, disposal over women, marriage customs, relations between old and young and penal laws (which only concern deviants): - it considers intolerance itself to be a virtue, under the rubric of 'justice.' A type whose traits are few in number but very strong, a species of people who are strict, warlike, clever, and silent, close to each other and closed up (which gives In German: Art . In this section, Art is translated as 'species' and Typus as 'type.' City-state.
them the most subtle feeling for the charms and nuances of association) will, in this way, establish itself (as a species) over and above the change of generations. The continuous struggle with constant unfavorable conditions is, as I have said, what causes a type to become sturdy and hard. But, eventually, a fortunate state will arise and the enormous tension will relax; perhaps none of the neighbors are enemies anymore, and the means of life, even of enjoying life, exist in abundance. With a single stroke, the bonds and constraints of the old discipline are torn: it does not seem to be necessary any more, to be a condition of existence, - if it wanted to continue, it could do so only as a form of luxury , as an archaic taste . Variation, whether as deviation (into something higher, finer, rarer) or as degeneration and monstrosity, suddenly comes onto the scene in the greatest abundance and splendor; the individual dares to be individual and different. At these turning points of history, a magnificent, diverse, jungle-like growth and upward striving, a kind of tropical tempo in the competition to grow will appear alongside (and often mixed up and tangled together with) an immense destruction and self-destruction. This is due to the wild egoisms that are turned explosively against each other, that wrestle each other 'for sun and light,' and can no longer derive any limitation, restraint, or refuge from morality as it has existed so far. It was this very morality that accumulated the tremendous amount of force to put such a threatening tension into the bow: - and now it is, now it is being 'outlived.' The dangerous and uncanny point has been reached when the greatest, most diverse, most comprehensive life lives past the old morality. The 'individual' is left standing there, forced to give himself laws, forced to rely on his own arts and wiles of self-preservation, self-enhancement, self-redemption. There is nothing but new whys and hows; there are no longer any shared formulas; misunderstanding is allied with disregard; decay, ruin, and the highest desires are horribly entwined; the genius of the race overflows from every cornucopia of good and bad; there is a disastrous simultaneity of spring and autumn, filled with new charms and veils that are well suited to the young, still unexhausted, still indefatigable corruption.
Danger has returned, the mother of morals, great danger, displaced onto the individual this time, onto the neighbor or friend, onto the street, onto your own child, onto your own heart, onto all of your own-most, secret-most wishes and wills: and the moral philosophers emerging at this time - what will they have to preach? These sharp observers and layabouts discover that everything Beyond Good and Evil is rapidly coming to an end, that everything around them is ruined and creates ruin, that nothing lasts as long as the day after tomorrow except one species of person, the hopelessly mediocre . Only the mediocre have prospects for continuing on, for propagating - they are the people of the future, the only survivors: 'Be like them! Be mediocre!' is the only morality that still makes sense, that still finds ears. But this morality of mediocrity is difficult to preach! It can never admit what it is and what it wants! It has to talk about moderation and dignity and duty and loving your neighbors, - it will have a hard time hiding its irony! -
There is an instinct for rank that, more than anything else, is itself the sign of a high rank; there is a pleasure in nuances of respect that indicates a noble origin and noble habits. The subtlety, quality, and stature of a soul is put dangerously to the test when something of the first rank passes by before the shudders of authority are there to protect it from intrusive clutches and crudeness: something that goes on its way like a living touchstone, undiscovered, unmarked, and experimenting, perhaps voluntarily covered and disguised. Anyone whose task and exercise is the investigation of souls will use this very art, in a variety of forms, to establish the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, inborn order of rank it belongs to: this sort of investigator will test out the soul's instinct for respect . Diff'erence engendre haine : many natures have a baseness that suddenly bursts out, like dirty water, when any sort of holy vessel, any sort of treasure from a closed shrine, any sort of book that bears the mark of a great destiny is carried past. On the other hand, there is an involuntary hush, a hesitation of the eye and a quieting of every gesture, all of which indicate that the soul feels the presence of something deserving the highest honors. The way in which respect for the Bible has, on the whole, been maintained in Europe might be the best piece of discipline and refinement in manners that Europe owes to Christianity. Books with this sort of profundity and ultimate meaning need the protection of an externally imposed tyranny of authority; this way, they can last through the millennia that are needed to use them up and figure them out. It is a great achievement when the 'Difference engenders hatred.'
masses (people of all kinds who lack depth or have speedy bowels) have finally had the feeling bred into them that they cannot touch everything, that there are holy experiences which require them to take off their shoes and keep their dirty hands away, - and this is pretty much as high a level of humanity as they will ever reach. Conversely, what is perhaps the most disgusting thing about so-called scholars, the devout believers in 'modern ideas,' is their lack of shame, the careless impudence of their eyes and hands that touch, taste, and feel everything. And there might still be a greater relative nobility of taste and tactfulness of respect within a people these days, within a lower sort of people, namely within the peasantry, than among the newspaper-reading demimonde of the spirit, the educated.
Whataman'sforefathers liked doing the most, and the most often, cannot be wiped from his soul: whether they were diligent savers and accessories of some writing desk or cash box, modest and middle-class in their wants and modest in their virtues as well; or whether they lived their lives giving orders from morning to night, fond of rough pleasures and perhaps of even rougher duties and responsibilities; or whether they finally sacrificed old privileges of birth and belongings in order to live entirely for their faith - their 'god' -, being people of a tender and unyielding conscience, embarrassed by any compromise. It is utterly impossible that a person might fail to have the qualities and propensities of his elders and ancestors in his body: however much appearances might speak against it. This is the problem of race. If you know anything about the ancestors, you can draw conclusions about the child. Some sort of harmful immoderation, some sort of corner jealousy, a clumsy insistence on always being right together, these three elements have constituted the true 'vulgar' type in every age. And something like this will be passed on to the child just as certainly as contaminated blood. With the help of the best education and culture, people will only just reach the point of being able to lie about a bequestlikethis. Andwhatelseareeducationandcultureforthesedays!In our very popular, which is to say vulgar age, 'education' and 'culture' essentially have to be the art of deception - to deceive about lineage, about the inherited vulgarity in body and soul. An educator who preaches truthfulness above all else these days and constantly calls for his students to 'be true! be natural! be what you are!' - after a while, even a virtuous and Beyond Good and Evil trusting ass like this will learn to reach for that furca of Horace, in order to naturam expellere : and with what success? 'The vulgar' usque recurret . -
At the risk of annoying innocent ears I will propose this: egoism belongs to the essence of the noble soul. I mean that firm belief that other beings will, by nature, have to be subordinate to a being 'like us' and will have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts this fact of its egoism without any question-mark, and also without feeling any harshness, compulsion, or caprice in it, but rather as something that may well be grounded in the primordial law of things. If the noble soul were to try to name this phenomenon, it would call it 'justice itself.' It admits to itself, under certain circumstances (that at first give it pause), that there are others with rights equal to its own. As soon as it is clear about this question of rank, it will move among these equals and 'equally righted' with an assured modesty and a gentle reverence equal to how it treats itself, in accordance with an inborn, celestial mechanics that all stars know so well. This is just another piece of its egoism, this finesse and self-limitation in dealing with equals - every star is an egoist of this sort. And the noble soul honors itself in them and in the rights that it gives them; it has no doubt that the exchange of rights and honors belongs to the natural state of things too, as the essence of all interaction. The noble soul gives as it takes, out of the passionate and sensitive instinct of retribution that is so fundamental to it. The concept of 'mercy' is senseless and noisome inter pares ; there might be a sublime way of letting gifts fall down on you from above, as it were, and lapping them up like raindrops; but the noble soul has no talent for this art and conduct. Its egoism gets in the way: it does not generally like looking 'upwards,' - but rather ahead , horizontally and slowly, or downwards: it knows that it is high up .-
'One can only truly admire those who do not seek themselves.' - Goethe to Rat Schlosser. 'Try expelling nature with a pitchfork and it keeps coming back,' from Horace's Epistolae ,I, , . Between equals. What is noble?
The Chinese have an expression that even mothers teach their children: siao-sin , 'make your heart small !' This is the true, basic tendency of late civilizations: I have no doubt that this sort of self-belittlement would be the first thing an ancient Greek would notice in us Europeans of today, and this alone would already 'offend his taste.' -
What, in the end, is base? - Words are acoustic signs for concepts; concepts, though, are more or less determinate pictorial signs for sensations that occur together and recur frequently, for groups of sensations. Using the same words is not enough to get people to understand each other: they have to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences too; ultimately, people have to have the same experience base . This is why a people in a community will understand each other better than they understand people belonging to other groups, even when they all use the same language. Or rather, when individuals have lived together for a long time under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, necessities, work), there arises something that 'understands itself ' - a people. In all souls, an equal number of frequently recurring experiences have gained an upper hand over ones that occur less frequently: understanding takes place faster and faster on this basis (the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation); and people join closer and closer together on the basis of this understanding. The greater the danger, the greater the need to agree quickly and easily about necessities. Not to misunderstand each other when there is danger: people require this in order to interact with each other. In every friendship or relationship, people still put this principle to the test: nothing will last once the discovery is made that one of the two feels, means, senses, wishes, fears something different from the other when using the same words. (Fear of the 'eternal misunderstanding': this is the benevolent genius that so often keeps people of the opposite sex from rushing into relationships at the insistence of their hearts and senses - and not some Schopenhauerian 'genius of the species' -!) What In German: Gemeinheit . Another possible translation is 'common,' which captures the sense of the word (and the point of the passage) according to which base qualities are found among common people, or are what people have in common. I have chosen to translate gemein as base (both here and throughout the text) since it captures more of the derogatory connotations of the term. Beyond Good and Evil
group of sensations in a soul will be the first to wake up, start speaking, and making demands is decisive for the whole rank order of its values, and will ultimately determine its table of goods. A person's valuations reveal something about the structure of his soul and what the soul sees as its conditions of life, its genuine needs. Now, assuming that needs have only ever brought people together when they could somehow indicate similar requirements and similar experiences with similar signs, then it follows, on the whole, that the easy communicability of needs (which ultimately means having only average and base experiences) must have been the most forceful of the forces that have controlled people so far. People who are more alike and ordinary have always been at an advantage; while people who are more exceptional, refined, rare, and difficult to understand will easily remain alone, prone to accidents in their isolation and rarely propagating. Immense countervailing forces will have to be called upon in order to cross this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile , people becoming increasingly similar, ordinary, average, herd-like, - increasingly base !
The more a psychologist - a born, inevitable psychologist and unriddler of souls - turns to exceptional cases and people, the greater the danger that he will be choked with pity: he needs hardness and cheerfulness more than anyone else. The ruin, the destruction of higher people, of strangely constituted souls, is the rule: it is horrible always to have a rule like this in front of your eyes. The manifold torment of the psychologist who discovered this destruction, who first discovered and then kept rediscovering (in almost every case) the whole inner 'hopelessness' of the higher person, the eternal 'too late!' in every sense, throughout the entirety of history, - this torment might make him turn bitterly against his own lot one day and try to destroy himself, - to 'ruin' himself. In almost every psychologist, you find a telling inclination and preference for dealing with normal, well-ordered people. This reveals that the psychologist is in constant need of a cure, of a type of forgetting and escape from the things that make his insight and incisiveness, that make his 'craft' weigh heavily on his conscience. It is characteristic of him to be afraid of his Continuation of the same thing. What is noble?
memory. He is easily silenced by other people's judgments: he listens with an unmoved face to how they honor, admire, love, and transfigure what he has seen , - or he keeps his silence hidden by expressly agreeing with some foreground opinion. Perhaps the paradox of his condition becomes so horrible that the masses, the educated, the enthusiasts, develop a profound admiration for the very things he has learned to regard with profound pity and contempt, - they admire the 'great men' and prodigies who inspire people to bless and honor the fatherland, the earth, the dignity of humanity, and themselves, 'great men' who are pointed out to young people for their edification ... And who knows if this is not just what has happened in all great cases so far: the masses worshiped a God, - and that 'God' was only a poor sacrificial animal! Success has always been the greatest liar, - and the 'work' itself is a success. The great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer - each one is disguised by his creations to the point of being unrecognizable. The 'work' of the artist, of the philosopher, is what invents whoever has created it, whoever was supposed to have created it. 'Great men,' as they are honored, are minor pieces of bad literature, invented after the fact; in the world of historical values, counterfeit rules . These great authors, for example, this Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol, - they are, and perhaps have to be men of the moment, excited, sensual, and childish, thoughtless and sudden in trust and mistrust; with souls that generally hide some sort of crack; often taking revenge in their work for some inner corruption, often flying off in search of forgetfulness for an all-too-faithful memory, often getting lost in the mud and almost falling in love with it until they become like the will-o'-the-wisps around swamps and pretend to be stars (then people might call them idealists), often fighting a prolonged disgust, a recurring specter of unbelief that makes them cold and forces them to pine for gloria and to feed on 'faith in itself ' from the hands of drunken flatterers. What torture these great artists and higher people in general are for anyone who has ever guessed what they really are! It is easy to
imagine that these men will soon be subject to eruptions of boundless and most devoted pity from women in particular (who are clairvoyant in the world of suffering and whose desires to help and save far exceed their ability to actually do so). The masses, the adoring masses, above all, do not understand this pity, and they pile all sorts of nosy and smug interpretations Fame. Beyond Good and Evil on it. This pity is continually deceived as to its own strength; women would like to believe that love makes all things possible, - this is their true faith . Oh, those who know hearts can guess how impoverished, stupid, helpless, presumptuous, and mistaken even the best and deepest love really is - how much more likely it is to destroy than to rescue! - It is possible that one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of knowledge about love lies hidden under the holy fable and disguise of the life of Jesus: the martyrdom of the most innocent and wishful of hearts, who never had enough of human love, who asked for nothing other than to love and be loved, but who asked it with harshness, with madness, with horrible outbursts against anyone refusing to love him; the story of a poor man who was unsatisfied and insatiable in love, who had to invent hell for there to be somewhere to send people who did not want to love him, - and who, in the end, having learned about human love, had to invent a God who was all love and all ability to love, - who had mercy on human love for being so desperately poor and ignorant! - Anyone who feels this way, anyone who knows this about love - will look for death. But why give yourself up to such painful things? Assuming you do not have to. -
The spiritual arrogance and disgust of anyone who has suffered deeply (order of rank is almost determined by just how deeply people can suffer), the trembling certainty that saturates and colors him entirely, a certainty that his sufferings have given him a greater knowledge than the cleverest and wisest can have, that he knows his way around and was once 'at home' in many distant and terrifying worlds that ' you don't know anything about!' ... this spiritual, silent arrogance of the sufferer, this pride of knowledge's chosen one, its 'initiate,' almost its martyr, needs all kinds of disguises to protect itself from the touch of intrusive and pitying hands, and in general from everyone who is not its equal in pain. Profound suffering makes you noble; it separates. One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicureanism, and a certain showy courage of taste that accepts suffering without a second thought and resists everything sad and profound. There are 'cheerful people' who use cheerfulness because it lets them be misunderstood: - they want to be misunderstood. There are 'scientific people' who use science
because it gives a cheerful appearance, and because being scientific implies that a person is superficial: - they want to encourage this false inference. Thereare free, impudent spirits who would like to hide and deny that they are shattered, proud, incurable hearts; and sometimes even stupidity is the mask for an ill-fated, all-too-certain knowing. - From which it follows that a more refined humanity will have great respect for 'masks,' and will not indulge in psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.
The thing that separates two people the most is a difference in their sense and degree of cleanliness. All the good behavior, mutual utility, and goodwill in the world will not help: what matters, in the end, is that they 'can't stand the smell of each other!' The highest instinct of cleanliness puts someone afflicted with it into the strangest and most dangerous solitude, in the form of a holy saint: because this is what holiness is - the highest spiritualization of this instinct. Some sort of shared knowledge of an indescribable abundance of joy in bathing, some sort of lust and craving that constantly drives the soul out of the night and into the morning, out of dullness and gloom into light, radiance, profundity, finesse -: however much a tendency like this characterizes somebody (it is a noble tendency), it separates him out as well. - The pity of the saint is a pity for the filth of the human, all-too-human. And there are degrees and heights where he feels even pity as a form of pollution, as filth ...
Signs of nobility: never thinking about debasing our duties into duties for everyone, not wanting to relinquish, not wanting to share your own responsibility; considering privileges and the exercise of these privileges as a duty . Someonewhostrivesforgreatnesswillregardeveryonehecomesacrossas either a means or a delay and obstacle - or as a temporary resting place. His distinctive and superior graciousness towards his fellow creatures is only possible when he is at his best, at his height, and dominating. Impatience Beyond Good and Evil and his awareness of being condemned to comedy until then (since even war is a comedy and concealment, just as every means conceals the end) ruins all company for him. This type of person knows solitude and what is most poisonous about it.
The problem of those who wait . Strokes of luck and many unpredictable factors are needed for a higher person, who contains the dormant solution to a problem, to go into action at the right time, 'into explosion' you might say. This does not usually happen, and in every corner of the earth people sit waiting, hardly knowing how much they are waiting, much less that they are waiting in vain. And every once in a while, the alarm call will come too late, the chance event that gives them 'permission' to act, - just whentheprimeofyouthandstrength for action has already been depleted by sitting still. And how many people have realized in horror, just as they 'jump up,' that their limbs have gone to sleep and their spirit is already too heavy! 'It's too late' - they say, having lost faith in themselves and being useless from this point on. - What if in the realm of genius, the 'Raphael without hands' (taking that phrase in the broadest sense) is not the exception but, perhaps, the rule? Perhaps genius is not rare at all: what is rare is the five hundred hands that it needs to tyrannize the /rho1 ' o , 'the right time,' in order to seize hold of chance! People who do not want to see someone's height will look all the more closely at everything about him that is low and in the foreground - in so doing, they show themselves for what they really are.
With every type of wound and loss, the lower, cruder soul is better off than the nobler soul. The dangers for the nobler soul must be greater; the likelihood that it will get into an accident and be destroyed is truly enormous, given the diversity of its conditions of life. - When a lizard loses a finger, it grows back: not so with people. - This phrase from Lessing's Emilia Galotti , act I, scene . What is noble?
- Bad enough! The same old story! When you have finished building your house, you suddenly notice that you have learned something in the process that you absolutely needed to know before you started building. The eternal, tiresome 'too late!' - The melancholy of everything finished ! ... - Wanderer, who are you? I watch you go on your way, without scorn, without love, with impenetrable eyes - damp and downhearted, like a plumb line that returns unsatisfied from every depth back into the light (what was it looking for down there?), with a breast that does not sigh, with lips that hide their disgust, with a hand that only grips slowly: who are you? Whathaveyoudone?Takearesthere,thisspotishospitabletoeveryone,relax! And whoever you may be: what would you like now? What do you find relaxing? Just name it: I'll give you whatever I have! - 'Relaxing? Relaxing? How inquisitive you are! What are you saying! But please, give me - -' What? What? Just say it! - 'Another mask! A second mask!' ... People with deep sorrows reveal this fact about themselves when they are happy: they have a way of grasping hold of happiness, as if they wanted to crush or suffocate it, out of jealousy. Oh, they know only too well that it will run away from them!
'Too bad! What? Isn't he going - backwards?' - Yes! But you understand him badly if you complain about it. He is going backwards like someone who wants to take a great leap. - -
- 'Will anyone believe me? But I insist on being believed: I have never been good at thinking about myself, and do so only on very rare occasions, only when forced, without any desire to pursue 'the matter,' ready to
digress away from 'me,' never with any faith in the results, all due to an unconquerable distrust in the possibility of self-knowledge that has led me to the point where I sense a contradictio in adjecto in even the concept of 'immediate knowledge' that is permitted by theoreticians. This whole state of affairs might be the most certain thing I do know about myself. I must have a kind of revulsion against believing anything definite about myself. Could there be a riddle here? Probably; but fortunately not one for my teeth. - Could this reveal what species I belong to? - But not to me: which is just how I want it to be. -'
'Butwhathappenedtoyou?'-'Idon'tknow,'hesaidhesitantly;'maybe the harpies flew over the table at me.' - Every once in a while these days, a mild, moderate, restrained person will fly into a sudden fury, smash dishes, knock over tables, scream, throw fits, insult everyone - and finally go off, ashamed, furious at himself, - but where? And why? To starve far away? To choke on his memory? - The danger will always be considerable for someone with the desires of a high and discriminating soul, who rarely finds his table set and his food ready: today, however, the danger will be extraordinary. Thrown into a noisy, vulgar age and not wanting to eat out of a single one of its bowls, he can easily die of hunger and thirst, or, if he finally 'digs in' anyway, he can be destroyed - by sudden nausea. - We have probably all sat at tables where we did not belong; and the most spiritual among us (who are also the most difficult to feed), are familiar with that dangerous dyspepsia that comes from a sudden insight into and disappointmentoverourfoodanddiningcompanions,-the after-dinner nausea .
It shows both subtle and noble self-control when you reserve your praise (assuming you want to give praise at all) for things you dis agree with: otherwise you would certainly be praising yourself, which offends good taste. Of course, this type of self-control offers people a handy opportunity and excuse for constantly misunderstanding you. In order to allow yourself this real luxury of taste and morality, you cannot live with fools of the spirit; you have to live among people whose misunderstandings and mistakes Contradiction in terms.
are subtle, and for that reason still amusing - or else you will have to pay dearly for it! - 'He praises me: that's why he agrees with me' - this asinine inference ruins the better part of life for us hermits, because it brings asses into our neighborhood and friendship.
To live with immense and proud composure; always beyond -. To freely have or not have your affects, your pros and cons, to condescend to them for a few hours; to seat yourself on them like you would on a horse or often like you would on an ass: - since you need to know how to use your stupidity as well as you know how to use your fire. To keep your three hundred foregrounds, and your dark glasses too: because there are times when nobody can look into our eyes, or even less into our 'grounds.' And to choose for company that mischievous and cheerful vice, politeness. And to keep control over your four virtues: courage, insight, sympathy, solitude. Because solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people ('society') inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people - 'base.'
The greatest events and thoughts - but the greatest thoughts are the greatest events - are the last to be comprehended: generations that are their contemporaries do not experience these sorts of events, - they live right past them. The same thing happens here as happens in the realm of stars. The light from the furthest stars is the last to come to people; and until it has arrived, people will deny that there are - stars out there. 'Howmanycenturies does it take for a spirit to be comprehended?' - this standard is also used to create the rank order and etiquette needed - by both spirit and star. -
'Thevision is free here and the spirit elevated.' -Butthere is an inverse type of person who is also at a height and also has a free vision - but who looks down . Cf. Goethe's Faust II, line f.
- What is noble? What does the word 'noble' still mean to us today? How do noble people reveal who they are, how can they be recognized under this heavy, overcast sky of incipient mob rule that makes everything leaden and opaque? - There are no actions that prove who they are, - actions are always ambiguous, always unfathomable -; and there are no 'works' either. Among artists and scholars these days, you will find plenty of people whose works reveal them to be driven by a deep desire for nobility. But this very need for nobility is fundamentally different from the needs of the noble soul itself, and almost serves as an eloquent and dangerous testimony to the absence of such needs. It is not works, it is faith that is decisive here, faith that establishes rank order (this old, religious formula now acquires a new and deeper meaning): some fundamental certainty that a noble soul has about itself, something that cannot be looked for, cannot be found, and perhaps cannot be lost either. The noble soul has reverence for itself .-
There are people who cannot avoid the fact that they have spirit, however much they might turn and twist, holding up their hands to prevent their eyes from giving them away (- as if their hands did not betray them too! -): in the end, they are always shown to be hiding something, namely spirit. One of the most subtle ways of deceiving people (at least for as long as this is possible), and successfully pretending to be more stupid than you really are (a skill that is as handy as an umbrella, in day-to-day life), is enthusiasm : including what belongs to it - virtue, for instance. Because, as Galiani said, and he must have known -: vertu est enthousiasme .
In a hermit's writings, you can always hear something of the echo of the desert, something of the whisper and the timid sideways glance of solitude. A new and more dangerous type of silence, of concealment, rings out in his strongest words, even in his cries. Anyone who has sat alone with 'Virtue is enthusiasm' from Galiani's Letter to Madame d'Epinay , II, p. .
his soul in intimate dispute and dialogue, year in, and year out, day and night, anyone who has become a cave bear or treasure hunter or treasure guard and dragon in his cave (which might be a labyrinth but also a gold mine): his very concepts will come to acquire their own twilight color, the smell of depth just as much as of mildew, something uncommunicative and reluctant that blows a chill on everything going past. The hermit does not believe that a philosopher - given that a philosopher was always a hermit first - has ever expressed his actual and final opinions in books: don't people write books precisely to keep what they hide to themselves? In fact, he will doubt whether a philosopher could even have 'final and actual' opinions, whether for a philosopher every cave does not have, must not have, an even deeper cave behind it - a more extensive, stranger, richer world above the surface, an abyss behind every ground, under every 'groundwork.' Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy - that is a hermit's judgment: 'There is something arbitrary in his stopping here, looking back, looking around, in his not digging any deeper here , and putting his spade away - there is also something suspicious about it.' Every philosophy conceals a philosophy too: every opinion is also a hiding place, every word is also a mask.
Every profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood. The latter might hurt his vanity; but the former hurts his heart and his sympathy which always says: 'Oh, why do you want things to be as hard for you as they are for me?'
The human being is a diverse, hypocritical, artificial, and opaque animal, uncannytootheranimals more because of his cunning and cleverness than his strength; the human being invented good conscience so that he could enjoy his soul as something simple , for once; and the whole of morality is a brave and lengthy falsification that makes it possible to look at the soul with anything like pleasure. Perhaps this point of view involves a much broader conception of 'art' than people are used to. In German: ein Abgrund hinter jedem Grunde, unter jeder 'Begrundung.'
A philosopher: this is a person who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if from outside, from above and below, as if by his type of events and lightning bolts; who is perhaps a storm himself, pregnant with new lightning; a fatal person in whose vicinity things are always rumbling, growling, gaping, and acting in uncanny ways. A philosopher: oh, a being who is frequently running away from himself, frequently afraid of himself, - but too curious not to always come back to himself ...
A man who says: 'I like that, I'll take it for my own and protect it and defend it against everyone'; a man who can conduct business, carry out a resolution, be faithful to a thought, hold on to a woman, punish and defeat someone for being insolent; a man who has his anger and his sword, and whom the weak, the suffering, the distressed, and even the animals like to come to and, by nature, belong to; in short, a man who is naturally master , - if a man like this has pity, well then! this pity is worth something! But what good is the pity of the sufferer! Or particularly, the pity of those who preach it! Almost everywhere in Europe today, there is a morbid over-sensitivity and susceptibility to pain, as well as an excessive amount of complaining and an increased tenderness that wants to dress itself up as something higher, using religion as well as bits and pieces of philosophy, thereisarealcultof suffering.The unmanliness ofwhatischristened'pity' in the circles of these enthusiasts is always, I think, the first thing that strikes your eye. - This latest type of bad taste needs to be forcefully and thoroughly exorcized; and ultimately, I would like people to put the good amulet of ' gai saber ' around their hearts and necks to fight it off, - 'gay science,' to make it germane to Germans.
The Olympian vice. - In spite of that philosopher who, being a true Englishman, tried to give laughter a bad reputation among all thoughtful Nietzsche is again playing on the similarity between Mitleiden (pity) and leiden (to suffer). In German: um es den Deutschen zu verdeutlichen (literally: to clarify it to Germans).
people -, 'laughter is a terrible infirmity of human nature, and one that every thinking mind will endeavor to overcome' (Hobbes) -, I would go so far as to allow myself a rank order of philosophers based on the rank of their laughter - right up to those who are capable of golden laughter. And given that even gods philosophize (a conclusion I have been drawn to many times -), I do not doubt that they know a new and super-human way of laughing - at the expense of everything serious! Gods like to make fun of things: it seems as if they cannot stop laughing, even during holy rites.
The genius of the heart, as it is possessed by that great hidden one, the tempter god and born pied piper of consciences, whose voice knows how to descend into the underworld of every soul, whose every word and every glance conveys both consideration and a wrinkle of temptation, whose mastery includes an understanding of how to seem - not like what he is but rather like one more compulsion for his followers to keep pressing closer to him, to keep following him more inwardly and thoroughly: - the genius of the heart, that makes everything loud and complacent fall silent and learn to listen, that smoothes out rough souls and gives them the taste of a new desire, - to lie still, like a mirror that the deep sky can mirror itself upon -; the genius of the heart, that teaches the foolish and over-hasty hand to hesitate and reach out more delicately; that guesses the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick, dull ice, and is a divining rod for every speck of gold that has long been buried in a prison of mud and sand; the genius of the heart, that enriches everyone who has come into contact with it, not making them blessed or surprised, or leaving them feeling as if they have been gladdened or saddened by external goods; rather, they are made richer in themselves, newer than before, broken open, blown on, and sounded out by a thawing wind, perhaps less certain, more gentle, fragile, and broken, but full of hopes that do not have names yet, full of new wills and currents, full of new indignations and countercurrents ... but what am I doing, my friends? Who am I talking about? Have I forgotten myself so much that I haven't even told you his name? Unless you have already guessed on your In German: Versucher-Gott . This could also mean the 'experimenting god.' Beyond Good and Evil own who this questionable spirit and god is, who wants to be praised in this way?
Like everyone who, from childhood, has constantly been underway and abroad, I have had many strange and not unthreatening spirits run across my path, but especially the one I have just been talking about, who has crossed my path again and again - in other words, nobody less than the god Dionysus , that great ambiguity and tempter god, to whom, as you know, I once offered my firstborn in all secrecy and reverence. I seem to be the last one to have offered him a sacrifice : because I have not found anyone who understood what I was doing then. In the meantime, I have learned much, all too much more about the philosophy of this god, passed on, as I said, from mouth to mouth - I, the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus: and can I, at last, start to give you, my friends, a small taste of this philosophy, as far as I am permitted? In undertones, which would be best, since it concerns many things that are secret, new, foreign, strange, uncanny. Even the fact that Dionysus is a philosopher and that, consequently, even gods philosophize, seems to me like something new and not without its dangers, something that might arouse mistrust precisely among philosophers, - among you, my friends, it has less opposition, unless it comes too late and at the wrong time: I have been told that you do not like believing in God and gods these days. And perhaps in recounting my story, I will have to take frankness further than will always be agreeable to the strict habits of your ears? Certainly, the god in question went further in dialogues like this, much, much further, and was always many steps ahead of me ... In fact, if it were permissible to follow human custom in ascribing beautiful, solemn names of splendor and virtue to him, I would have to offer many praises for his explorer's, discoverer's heart, for his daring and genuine honesty, his truthfulness and his love of wisdom. But a god like this will have no use at all for this honorable rubbish and splendor. 'Keep this for yourself,' he would say, 'and for those like you and anyone else who needs it! I - have no reason for covering my nakedness!' - You can guess: this type of divinity and philosopher is, perhaps, lacking in shame? - He once
said: 'I love humans under certain circumstances' - meaning Ariadne, who was present -: 'I think humans are pleasant, brave, inventive animals that have no equal on earth, they find their way around any labyrinth. I am very fond of AreferencetoNietzsche'sfirstpublished book, DieGeburtderTrag odie ( TheBirthofTragedy )( ).
them: I think about how I can help them advance and make them stronger, more evil and more profound than they are.' - 'Stronger, more evil, and more profound?' I asked, startled. - 'Yes,' he said again, 'stronger, more evil, and more profound; and more beautiful' - and at that, the tempter godsmiledhishalcyonsmile,asifhehadjustpaidacharmingcompliment. You can see: this divinity lacks more than just shame -; but you can also see that there are good reasons for supposing that the gods could learn a thing or two from us humans. We humans are - more human ...
Oh, what are you anyway, my written and painted thoughts! It was not long ago that you were still so colorful, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices that you made me sneeze and laugh - and now? You have already lost your novelty, and I am afraid that some of you are ready to turn into truths: they already look so immortal, so pathetically decent and upright, so boring! And was it ever any different? So, what subjects do we copy out and paint, we mandarins with Chinese brushes, we immortalizers of things that let themselves be written - what are the only things we can paint? Oh, only ever things that are about to wilt and lose their smell! Only ever storms that have exhausted themselves and are moving off, and feelings that are yellowed and late! Only ever birds that have flown and flown astray until they are tired and can be caught by hand, - by our hand! We only immortalize things that cannot live and fly for much longer, only tired and worn-out things! And I only have colors for your afternoon , my written and painted thoughts, perhaps many colors, many colorful affections and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds: - but nobody will guess from this how you looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and wonders of my solitude, you, my old, beloved - wicked thoughts! In German: menschlicher . This could also mean 'more humane.'
Aftersong Oh noon of life! Oh summer garden site For celebrating! There's restless joy in standing watch and waiting! I wait for friends, I'm ready day and night Where are you, friends? Do come! The time is right! For you, the glacier clothes its old gray hue In rose attire, The rivers seek you, running with desire, The winds and clouds climb high into the blue, As high as birds - to keep their watch for you. My table waits for you with each delight: Such lonely ledges Are home to few, save stars and chasms' edges. My realm - its bounds reach past the range of sight, My honey too - who dreams they'll taste the like? ... - Oh friends, you're there ! But - what grave ill portends? Am I a stranger? You pause; your wonder wounds far worse than anger! I am no more? - In face, or stride or hands? But am I not what I am for you, friends? So was I once another? Self-unknown? I've left my own source? A strength too often set against its own force? A wrestler beaten by himself alone, And wounded by a victory of his own? Nietzsche follows a very strict rhyme and rhythmic scheme in this poem; the rhyme is ABBAA throughout, and the meter follows a classical ode form (both are preserved in this translation). From high mountains: Aftersong I've looked where sharpest winds blow frozen air? I've made my home here, On glaciers where no other soul dares roam near, Forgot both man and god, both curse and prayer? Became a ghost who walked with polar bears? - Old friends! See here! Your faces have gone white, With love - and pain too! Just leave in peace: there's nothing to detain you : Here in the distant ice-filled rocky height This realm belongs to hunters, born to fight! I'm now a wicked huntsman! Look - my bow Is stiff and stock straight! The strong alone can pull back such a taut weight - -: Take care! My arrow's speed is far from slow, The danger's great - so flee to safety! go! ... You're turning back? - Oh heart, this blow hits hard, But hope must stay fast:
Hold open doors as new friends make their way past! Old friends must be left back! Old memories barred! You once were young - now, youth has been restored! We shared one hope - that was our common band, Now - who reads these signs That love had once inscribed, such faded half-lines? They look just like a parchment that the hand is loath to touch, - they're just browned and tanned. What are they called? - since friendship's at an end Just ghostly brothers! Who rattle nightly on my heart and shutters, Who look at me and say: 'you were my friend' - Those wilted words once bore a rosebud scent! Oh youthful longing; how you failed to see Dashed expectations! Those friends turned family, seeming close relations, - How they grew old , and turned their heels to flee: For only those who change keep ties with me. Beyond Good and Evil Oh noon of life! Oh summer garden bright! Oh youth returning! There's restless joy in waiting, watching, yearning! I wait for friends, I'm ready day and night The new friends now! Do come! The time is right! This song is gone, - the longing cries are through, Their sweet sounds ended. The work of a magician I'd befriended, The friend of noon-time - but - no! don't ask who It was at noon, when one turned into two ... Now we can feast, with triumph in the air, The fest of all fests: Friend Zarathustra came, the guest of all guests! The world can laugh, the gruesome curtain tear, The wedding day of light and dark was here ... Aeschylus ( c . Alcibiades ( c . Athenian statesman and general
- B.C.) - B.C.) Greek mythological figure Athenian author of comedies Ariadne Aristophanes ( c . - B.C.) Athena Greek goddess of war and wisdom Augustinus, Aurelius ( - ) Roman philosopher Bacon, Francis, viscount of Verulam ( - ) English philosopher Balzac, Honor'ede( - ) French novelist Bayle, Pierre ( - ) French philosopher Beethoven, Ludwig van ( - ) German composer Bentham, Jeremy ( - ) English philosopher Berkeley, George ( - ) Irish philosopher Beyle, Henri see Stendhal Bizet, Georges ( - ) French composer Borgia, Cesare ( - ) Florentine nobleman Boscovich, Ruggiero Giuseppe ( - ) Dalmatian mathematician and philosopher Bruno, Giordano ( - ) Italian philosopher Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord ( - ) English poet, author of Manfred Caesar, Gaius Julius ( - B.C.) Roman statesman and general Cagliostro, Alessandro, Count (Balsamo, Giuseppe) ( - ) Italian adventurer Carlyle, Thomas ( - ) Scottish philosopher and historian Athenian dramatist Catilina, Lucius Sergius ( c . - B.C.) Roman nobleman Cicero, Marcus Tullius ( - B.C.) Roman philosopher and politician Circe Greek mythological figure Comte, Auguste ( - ) French philosopher Copernicus, Nicholas ( - ) Polish astronomer Cromwell, Oliver ( - ) English statesman Dante Alighieri ( - ) Italian poet, author of La Divina Commedia Darwin, Charles Robert ( - ) English biologist Delacroix, Ferdinand Victor Eug'ene ( - ) French painter Demosthenes ( - B.C.) Greek orator and statesman Descartes, Ren'e( - ) French philosopher Diderot, Denis ( - ) French philosopher Dionysus Greek god Duhring, Karl Eugen ( - ) German philosopher, author of Der Werth des Lebens and Wirklichkeitsphilosophie Empedocles (fifth century B.C.) statesman Epicurus ( - B.C.) Presocratic philosopher and Greek philosopher German philosopher, author of
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb ( - ) Speeches to the German Nation Flaubert, Gustave ( - ) French novelist Frederick II (the Great) ( - ) king of Prussia Frederick II of Hohenstaufen ( - ) German emperor Frederick William I ( - ) king of Prussia Italian economist, author of Lettres 'a Galiani, Ferdinando ( - ) Mme d'Epinay Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von ( - ) German poet, novelist, and statesman, author of Faust and Die Leiden des jungen Werther Gogol, Nikolaj Vassilevic ( - ) Russian novelist Guyon, Jeanne Marie de ( - ) French writer Hafiz (Mohammed Schams od-Din) ( c . - ) Persian poet Hartmann, Eduard von ( - ) German philosopher
Nietzsche published each of the first three parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (TSZ hereafter) separately between and , during one of his most productive and interesting periods, in between the appearance of The Gay Science (which he noted had itself marked a new beginning of his thought) and Beyond Good and Evil .Aswith the rest of his books, very few copies were sold. He later wrote a fourth part (called 'Fourth and Final Part') which was not published until , and then privately, only for a few friends, by which time Nietzsche had slipped into the insanity that marked the last decade of his life. Not long afterwards an edition with all four parts published together appeared, and most editions and translations have followed suit, treating the four parts as somehow belonging in one book, although many scholars see a natural ending of sorts after Part and regard Part as more of an appendix than a central element in the drama narrated by the work. Nietzsche, who was trained as a classicist, may have been thinking of the traditional tragedy competitions in ancient Greece, where entrants submitted three tragedies and a fourth play, a comic and somewhat bawdy satyr play. At any event, he thought of this final section as in some sense the 'Fourth Part' and any interpretation must come to terms with it. Nietzsche went mad in January .For more on the problem of Part , see Laurence Lampert's discussion in Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra ' (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), pp. - .For a contrasting view (that Part is integral to the work and a genuine conclusion), see Robert Gooding-Williams, Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ). viii
TSZ is unlike any of Nietzsche's other works, which themselves are unlike virtually anything else in the history of philosophy. Nietzsche himself provides no preface or introduction, although the section on TSZ in his late book, Ecce Homo , and especially its last section, 'Why I am a Destiny,' are invaluable guides to what he might have been up to. Zarathustra seemstobesomesortofprophet,calling people, modern European Christian people especially, to account for their failings and encouraging them to pursue a new way of life. (As we shall discuss in a moment, even this simple characterization is immediately complicated by the fact that Nietzsche insists that this has nothing to do with a 'replacement' religion, and that the book is as much a parody of a prophetic view as it is an instance of it.) In Ecce Homo Nietzsche expresses some irritation that no one has wondered about the odd name of this prophet. Zarathustra was a Persian prophet (known to the Greeks as Zoroaster) and he is important for Nietzsche because he originally established that the central struggle in human life (even cosmic life) was between two absolutely distinct principles, between good and evil, which Nietzsche interpreted in Christian and humanist terms as the opposition between selflessness and benevolence on the one hand and egoism and self-interest on the other. Nietzsche tells us two things about this prophet: Zarathustra created this fateful error of morality: this means he has to be the first to recognize it. (Nietzsche means that Zarathustra was the first to recognize its calamitous consequences.) And: [t]he self-overcoming of morality from out of truthfulness; the selfovercoming of the moralists into their opposite - into me - that is what the name Zarathustra means coming from my mouth. That is, we can now live, Zarathustra attempts to teach, freed from the picture of this absolute dualism, but without moral anarchy and without sliding into a bovine contentment or a violent primitivism. Sometimes, especially in the first two parts, this new way of living is presented Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (hereafter EH), in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols , trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , pp. - .
Estimates about when Zarathustra actually lived vary from to . Somewhere between and would appear the safest guess. Nietzsche, however, evinces virtually no interest in the historical Zarathustra or the actual religion of Zoroastrianism. EH, , p. . Ibid. ix in sweeping and collective, historical terms, as an epochal transition from mere human being to an 'overman,' virtually a new species. This way of characterizing the problem tends to drop out after Part , and Zarathustra focuses his attention on what he often calls the problem of self-overcoming: how each of us, as individuals, might come to be dissatisfied with our way of living and so be able to strive for something better, even if the traditional supports for and guidance toward such a goal seem no longer credible (e.g. the idea of the purpose of human nature, or what is revealed by religion, or any objective view of human happiness and so forth). And in Part Zarathustra asks much more broadly about a whole new way of thinking about or imagining ourselves that he believes is necessary for this sort of re-orientation. He suggests that such a possibility depends on how we come to understand and experience temporality at a very basic level, and he introduces a famous image, 'the eternal return of the same' (which he elsewhere calls Zarathustra's central teaching), to begin to grapple with the problem. He himself becomes deathly ill in contemplating this cyclical picture; not surprisingly since it seems to deny a possibility he himself had hoped for at the outset - a decisive historical revolution, a time after which all would be different from the time before. Many of the basic issues in the book are raised by considering what it means for Zarathustra to suffer from and then 'recover' from such an 'illness.'
TSZisoftenreported to be Nietzsche's most popular and most read book, but the fact that the book is so unusual and often hermetic has made for wildly different sorts of reception. Here is one that is typical of the kind of popular reputation Nietzsche has in modern culture: Together with Goethe's Faust and the New Testament, Zarathustra was the most popular work that literate soldiers took into battle for inspiration and consolation [in WW I - RP]. The 'beautiful words' of Zarathustra, one author wrote, were especially apt for the Germans who 'more than any other Volk possessed fighting natures in Zarathustra's sense.' About , copies of a specially durable wartime Zarathustra were distributed to the troops. Steven Aschheim, TheNietzsche Legacy in Germany, - (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), p. . The quotation cited is from Rektor P. Hoche, 'Nietzsche und der deutsche Kampf,' Zeitung f ur Literatur, Kunst und Wissenschaft : ( March ). x
Now it is hard to imagine a book less suitable for such a purpose than Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra . It is true that Zarathustra had famously said, 'You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I tell you: it is the good war that hallows any cause' (p. ), but even that passage is surrounded by claims that the highest aspiration is actually to be a 'saint of knowledge,' and that only failing that should one become a warrior (what sort of continuum could this be?), and that the 'highest thought' of such warriors should be one commanded by Zarathustra, and it should have nothing to do with states and territory but with the injunction that human being shall be overcome. (What armies would be fighting whom in such a cause?) Moreover one wonders what 'inspiration and consolation' our 'literate soldiers' could have found in the Fellini-esque title character, himself hardly possessed of a 'warlike nature,' chronically indecisive, sometimes self-pitying, wandering, speechifying, dancing about and encouraging others to dance, consorting mostly with animals, confused disciples, a dwarf, and his two mistresses. And what could they have made of the speeches, with those references to bees overloaded with honey, soothsayers, gravediggers, bursting coffins, pale criminals, red judges, self-propelling wheels, shepherds choking on snakes, tarantulas, 'little golden fishing rods of wisdom,' Zarathustra's ape, Zarathustra speaking too 'crudely and sincerely' for 'Angora rabbits,' and the worship of a jackass in Part , with that circle of an old king, a magician, the last pope, a beggar, a shadow, the conscientious of spirit, and a sad soothsayer? Whatinfactcould anyone makeofthisbewilderingwork,partsofwhich seem more hermetic than Celan, parts more self-indulgent and bizarre than bad Bob Dylan lyrics? Do we know what we are meant to make of it? Nietzsche himself, in Ecce Homo , was willing to say a number of things about the work, that in it he is the 'inventor of the dithyramb,' that with
In EH, ,p. when Nietzsche says that after Zarathustra 'the concept of politics will have then merged entirely into a war of spirits' he does not pause to tell us what a war, not of bodies, but of spirits might be. And he goes on to say 'there will be wars such as the earth has never seen,' and we might note that he seems to mean that different sorts, types of 'wars' will make up 'great politics.' Cf. EH, , p. : 'I do not want to be a saint, I would rather be a buffoon . . . Perhaps I am a buffoon . . . And yet in spite of this or rather not in spite of this - because nothing to date has been more hypocritical than saints - the truth speaks from out of me. - But the truth is terrible : because lies have been called truth so far.' Adithyramb was a choral hymn sung in the classical period in Greece by fifty men or boys to honor the god Dionysus. xi Introduction TSZ he became the 'first tragic philosopher,' and that TSZ should be understood as 'music.' When it is announced, as the work to follow The Gay Science , we are clearly warned of the difficulty that will challenge any reader. Section had concluded the original version of The Gay Science with 'Incipit tragoedia,' and then the first paragraph of TSZ's Prologue. Nietzsche's warning comes in the second edition Preface: ' Incipit tragoedia' [tragedy begins] we read at the end of this suspiciously innocent book. Beware! Something utterly wicked and mischievous is being announced here: incipit parodia [parody begins], no doubt.'
Are there other works that could be said to be both tragedies and parodies? Don Quixote , perhaps, a work in many other ways also quite similar to TSZ? If Nietzsche announced that his TSZ can and should be read as a parody, what exactly would that mean? I do not mean what it would mean to find parts of it funny; I mean trying to understand how it could be both a prophetic book and a kind of send-up of a prophetic book. HowitcouldbothpresentZarathustra as a teacher and parody his attempt to play that role? Why has the work remained for the most part a place simply to mine for quotations in support of Nietzschean 'theories' of the overman,theEternalReturnoftheSame,andthe'lasthumanbeings';all as if the theories were contained inside an ornate literary form, delivered by Nietzsche's surrogate, an ancient Persian prophet? At the very least, especially when we look also to virtually everything written after the later s, when Nietzsche in effect abandoned the traditional essay form in favor of less continuous, more aphoristic, and here parabolic forms, it is clear that Nietzsche wanted to resist incorporation into traditional philosophy, to escape traditional assumptions about the writing of philosophy. In a way that point is obvious, nowhere more obvious than in the form of TSZ, even if the steady stream of books about Nietzsche's metaphysics, or value theory, or even epistemology shows no sign of abating. The two Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (hereafter GS), edited by Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), , p. . The intertwining of the two dramatic modes of tragedy and comic parody appear throughout the text. A typical example is at the end of 'The Wanderer' in Part , when Zarathustra laughs in a kind of self-mocking and then weeps as he remembers the friends he has had to leave behind. (p. ). It is also very likely that Nietzsche, the 'old philologist,' is referring to the end of Plato's Symposium , where Socrates claims that what we need is someone who can write both tragedies and comedies, that the tragic poet might also be comic ( Symposium , c-d). xii
more interesting questions are rather, first, what one takes such resistance to mean, what the practical point is, we might say, of the act of so resisting, what Nietzsche is trying to do with his books, as much as what his books mean, if we are not to understand them in the traditional philosophical sense. (It would have been helpful if, in Ecce Homo , Nietzsche had not just written the chapter 'Why I Write Such Good Books,' but 'Why I Write Books At All.') Secondly, why has this resistance been so resisted, to the point that there are not even many disputes about TSZ, no contesting views about what parodia might have meant? One obvious answer should be addressed immediately. It may be so hard to know what TSZ is for, and so easy simply to plunder it unsystematically, because the work is in large part a failure. TSZ echoes Romantic attempts at created mythologies, such as William Blake's, as well as Wagner's attempt to re-work Teutonic myth, but it remains so sui generis and unclassifiable that it resists even the broadest sort of category and does not itself instruct us, at least not very clearly or very well, about how to read it. That it is both a tragedy and a parody helps little with the details. Large stretches of it seem ponderous and turgid, mysteriously abandoning Nietzsche's characteristic light touch and pithy wit. The many dreams and dream images appealed to by Zarathustra jumble together so much (in one case, grimacing children, angels, owls, fools, and butterflies as big as children tumble out of a broken coffin) that an attempt at interpretation seems beside the point. (When a disciple tries to offer a reading of this dream - and seems to do a pretty fair job of it - Zarathustra ultimately just stares into this disciple's face and shakes his head with apparent deep disappointment.) These difficulties have all insured that TSZ is not read or studied in university philosophy departments anywhere near as often as the Nietzschean standards, The Birth of Tragedy , The Uses and Disadvantages of History , Beyond Good and Evil , and The Genealogy of Morals .
This is understandable, but such judgments may be quite premature. Throughouttheshortandextremelyvolatile reception of his work, Nietzsche may not yet have been given enough leeway with his various experiments in a new kind of philosophical writing, may have been subject much too quickly to philosophical 'translations.' This is an issue - how to write philosophy under contemporary historical conditions, or even how to write 'philosophically' now that much of traditional philosophy itself is no longer historically credible - that Nietzsche obviously devoted xiii agreat deal of thought to, and it is extremely unlikely that his conclusions would not show up in worked out, highly crafted forms. They ask of the reader something different than traditional reading and understanding, but they are asking for some effort, even demanding it, from readers. This is especially at issue in TSZ since in so far as it could be said to have a dominant theme, it is this problem, Zarathustra's problem: who is his audience? What is he trying to accomplish? How does he think he should go about this? While it is pretty clear what it means for his teaching to be rejected, he seems himself very unsure of what would count as having that teaching understood and accepted. (The theme - the question we have to understand first before anything in the work can be addressed is clearly announced in the subtitle: A Book for All and None . How could a book be for all and none?)
Onthe face of it at least some answers seem accessible from the plot of the work. Zarathustra leaves his cave to revisit the human world because he wants both to prophesy and help hasten the advent of something like a new 'attempt' on the part of mankind, a post 'beyond' or 'over the human' ( Ubermensch ) aspiration. Such a goal would be free of the psychological dimensions that have led the human type into a state of some crisis (made worse by the fact that most do not think a crisis has occurred or that any new attempt is necessary). Much of the first two parts is thus occupied with setting out these failings, and the various human types who most embody them, railing against them by showing what they have cost us, and intimating how things might be different. Some such failings, like havingthewrongsortofrelationtooneself,orbeingburdenedwithaspirit of revenge against time itself, are particularly important. So we are treated to brief characterizations of the despisers of the body, the pale criminal, the preachers of death, warriors, chastity, the pitying, the hinterworldly, the bestowers of virtue, women, priests, the virtuous, the rabble, the sublime ones, poets, and scholars. Along the way these typologies, one might call them, are interrupted by even more figurative parables (On the Adder's Bite, the Blessed Isles, Tarantulas, the Stillest Hour), by highly figurative homilies on such topics as friends, marriage, a free death, self-overcoming, redemption, and prudence, as well as by three songs, Night Song, Dance Song, and Grave Song. xiv
However, we encounter a very difficult issue right away when we try to take account of the fact that in all these discussions, Zarathustra's account is throughout so highly parabolic, metaphorical, and aphoristic. Rather than state various claims about virtues and the present age and religion and aspirations, Zarathustra speaks about stars, animals, trees, tarantulas, dreams, and so forth. Explanations and claims are almost always analogical and figurative. (In his discussion of TSZ in Ecce Homo , Nietzsche wrote, 'The most powerful force of metaphor that has ever existed is poor and trivial compared with the return of language to the nature of imagery.') Whyis his message given in such a highly figurative, literary way? It is an important question because it goes to the heart of Nietzsche's own view of his relation to traditional philosophy, and how the literary and rhetorical form of his books marks whatever sort of new beginning he thinks he has made. Philosophy after all has traditionally thought of itself as clarifying what is unclear, and as attempting to justify what in the everyday world too often passes without challenge. Philosophy tries to reveal, we might say in general, what is hidden (in presuppositions, commitments, folk wisdom, etc.). If we think of literature in such traditional ways, though, then there is a clear contrast. A literary work does not assert anything. 'Meaning' in a poem or play or novel is not only hidden, and requires effort to find; our sense of the greatness of great literature is bound up with our sense that the credibility and authority of such works rests on how much and how complexly meaning is both profoundly and unavoidably hidden and enticingly intimated, promised; how difficult to discern, but 'there,' extractable in prosaic summaries only with great distortion. Contrary to the philosophical attempt (or fantasy) of freeing ordinary life from illusions, confusions and unjustified presuppositions, one way in which a literary treatment departs from ordinary life lies in its great compression of possible meanings, defamiliarization, 'showing' paradoxically how much more is hidden, mysterious, sublime in ordinary life than is ordinarily understood. (One thinks of Emily Dickinson's pithy summary: 'Nature is a haunted house, but art is a house that wants to be haunted.') EH, , p. .
Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters, ed. T. H. Johnson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), p. . There is another text by a 'Nietzschean' author that might also serve as, might even have been, a commentary on this aspect of TSZ - Kafka's famous parable, 'On Parables:' xv Introduction Whatwoulditmeantopresenta'teaching'withsomanyphilosophical resonances, so close to the philosophy we might call 'value theory,' in a way that not only leaves so much hidden, but that in effect heightens our sense of the interpretive work that must be done before philosophical reflection can hope to begin (if even then), and even further impedes any hermeneutic response by inventing a context so unfamiliar and often bizarre? There is a famous claim concerning truth and appearance and a set of complex images that are both relevant to this question.
In more traditional philosophical terms, Nietzsche often stresses that we start going wrong when we become captured by the picture of revealing 'reality,' the 'truth,' beneath appearances, in mere opinions. This can be particularly misleading, Nietzsche often states, when we think of ourselves in post-Kantian modernity as having exposed the supposed groundlessness'underneath'thedeceptiveappearancesofvalueandpurpose, when we think that we have rendered impossible any continuation of Zarathustra's pronounced love of human beings, life, and the earth. Some impasse in the possible affirmation of value (what Zarathustra calls Manycomplain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says, 'Go over,' he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder [Druben], something unknown to us, something that he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day; that is a different matter. Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares. Another said: I bet that is also a parable. The first said: You have won. The second said: But unfortunately only in parable. The first said: No, in reality; in parable you have lost . Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka (New York: Pocket Books, ), p. .Itiswellknown that Kafka read and admired Nietzsche. The story about his vigorous defense of Nietzsche against Max Brod's charge that Nietzsche was a 'fraud' is often cited. See Klaus Wagenbach, Kafka , trans. Ewald Osers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), p. .
I pass over here another complex dimension of Nietzsche's literary style. Zarathustra is not Nietzsche, any more than Prospero is Shakespeare, and appreciating the literary irony of the work is indispensable to a full reading. I have tried to sketch an interpretation along these lines in 'Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ' in Nietzsche's New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics , ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. - . xvi
'esteeming') has been reached ('nihilism') but this 'radical enlightenment' picture is not the right description. (See Zarathustra's attack on the 'preachers of death' and his rejection there of the melancholy that might result when 'they encounter a sick or a very old person or a corpse, and right away they say, 'life is refuted'' (p. ).) And Nietzsche clearly wants to discard as misleading that simple distinction between appearance and reality itself. He is well known for claiming, in his own mini-version of the self-education of the human spirit in The Twilight of the Idols , that We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world. However, even if this sort of suspicion of the everyday appearances (that they are merely a pale copy of the true world, the true ideal, etc.) is rejected, it is very much not the case that Nietzsche wants to infer that we are therefore left merely to achieve as much subjectively measured happiness as possible, nor does he intend to open the door to a measureless, wildly tolerant pluralism. As he has set it out, Nietzsche's new philosophers (or post-philosophers) are still driven by what he calls a modern 'intellectual conscience': they want to know if what matters to them now ought to matter, whether there might be more important things to care about. Even though not driven by an otherworldly or transcendent or even 'objective' ideal beneath or above the appearances, they should still be able to 'overcome themselves' and in this way, to escape 'wretched contentment.' That is, they cannot orient themselves from the question, 'What matters in itself ?' as if a reality beneath the appearances, but even without reliance on such a reality, a possible self-dissatisfaction and striving must still be possible if an affirmable, especially what Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols ,in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ ,transl. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, ), p. . GS, , p. . See also the remark in Daybreak , about how the drive to knowledge
has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or [to be able to want the happiness] of a strong, firmly rooted delusion; even to imagine such a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference - perhaps, indeed, we too are unrequited lovers. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality , trans. R. J. Hollingdale and ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , p. ) xvii Introduction Nietzsche sometimes calls a 'noble' life, is still to be possible. And he clearly believes that the major element of this possibility is his own effect onhislisteners. A great deal depends onhim (just as in the 'tragic age of the Greeks,'Socrateswasabletocreate,tolegislateanewformoflife).Inwhat way, goes the implied question or experiment, can a human being now tied to the 'earth' still aspire to be ultimately 'over-man,' Ubermensch ? How could one come to want such an earthly self-overcoming in these post-death-of-God conditions? Whence the right sort of contempt for one's present state, and aspiration for some future goal? Whatever the answer to such questions, Nietzsche clearly thinks that the character of Zarathustra's literary rhetoric must be understood in terms of this goal. Parallel to the paradox of a book for all and none, this problem suggests the paradox of how Zarathustra by 'going under ' and by destroying hopes fora'hinterworld' in the names of 'earth' and 'life' can prepare the way foranew form of 'going over ,' can prepare the transition between human beings as they now are and an 'overman.' One final version of essentially the same paradox: how can Zarathustra inspire and shame without being imitated, without creating disciples?
For example, in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil , Nietzsche notes that our long struggle with and often opposition to and dissatisfaction with our own moral tradition, European Christianity, has created a 'magnificent tension ( Spannung ) of the spirit in Europe, the likes of which the earth has never known: with such a tension in our bow we can now shoot at the furthest goals.' But, he goes on, the 'democratic Enlightenment' also sought to 'unbend' such a bow, to 'make sure that spirit does not experience itself so readily as 'need.'' This latter formulation coincides with a wonderfully lapidary expression in The Gay Science . In discussing 'the millions of Europeans who cannot endure their boredom and themselves,' he notes that they would even welcome 'a craving to suffer' and so 'to find in their suffering a probable reason for action, for In EH, what distinguishes Zarathustra is said to be his capacity for contradictions like this (EH, , pp. - ). See also section , 'On Great Longing,' references to 'loving contempt' (p. ) and to the intertwining of love and hate for life in 'The Other Dance Song' (p. ). This is also the problem of 'exemplarity' in Nietzsche's Schopenhauer as Educator essay. There is an illuminating essay on this issue, 'Nietzsche's Perfectionism: A Reading of Schopenhauer as Educator ,' of great relevance to TSZ, by James Conant in Nietzsche's Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche's Prelude to Philosophy , ed. R. Schacht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. - . Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil , transl. Judith Norman, ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), preface, p. . xviii Introduction deeds.' In sum: 'neediness is needed!' ('Not ist notig') In TSZ, the point is formulated in a similar way: Beware! The time approaches when human beings no longer launch the arrow of their longing beyond the human, and the string of their bow will have forgotten how to whir!
Beware! The time approaches when human beings will no longer give birth to a dancing star. Beware! The time of the most contemptible human is coming, the one who can no longer have contempt for himself. [p. ] In these terms Nietzsche is trying to create something like a living model for a new, heroic form of affirmation of life (something like the way Montaigne simply offered himself to his readers), and by means of this model to re-introduce this 'tension' of spirit so necessary for self-overcoming. This picture of a living, complex Zarathustra and his unsettledness, his inability to rest content either in isolation or in society, his uncertainty about a form of address, his apostrophes to various dimensions of himself, his illness and recovery, are all supposed to provide us with both an archetypal picture of the great dilemma of modernity itself (the problem of affirmation, a new striving to be 'higher'), but also to inspire the kind of thoughtfulness and risk taking Zarathustra embodies. In his more grandiose moments Nietzsche no doubt thought of Zarathustra's struggles and explorations as reaching for us the same fundamental level as Homer's Odysseus, as Moses, as Virgil's Aeneas, as Christ. TSZ is somehow to be addressed to the source of whatever longing, striving, desire gives life a direction, inspires sacrifice and dedication. And it will be a very difficult task. There is a clear account of the basic issue in Ecce Homo : The psychological problem apparent in the Zarathustra type is how someone who to an unprecedented degree says no and does no to everything everyone has said yes to so far, - how somebody like this can nevertheless be the opposite of a no-saying spirit. GS, . See also 'On Unwilling Bliss' in the third part, where Zarathustra speaks of the 'desire for love' (p. xxx). For more on Nietzsche's relation to Montaigne and the French psychological tradition, see my Nietzsche moraliste fran cais. La conception nietzsch eenne d'une psychologie philosophique ,forthcoming, , Odile Jacob. Emerson is also clearly a model as well. See Conant, Nietzsche's Postmoralism . EH, , pp. - . xix
And this way of putting the point makes it clear that Nietzsche also imagines that the experiment in so addressing each other might easily and contingently fail and fail catastrophically; it may just be the case that a sustainable attachment to life and to each other requires the kind of more standard, prosaic 'illusion' (a lie) that we have also rendered impossible. The possibility of such a failure is also an issue that worries Zarathustra a great deal, as we shall see.
The problem, then, that Zarathustra must address, the problem of 'nihilism,' is a kind of collective failure of desire, bows that have lost their tension, the absence of 'need' or of any fruitful self-contempt, the presence of wretched contentment, 'settling' for too little. And these discussions of desire and meaning throw into a different light how he means to address such a failure. As we have seen, even texts other than TSZ are overwhelmingly literary, rhetorically complex, elliptical, and always a matter of adopting personae and 'masks,' often the mask of a historian or scientist. He appears to believe that this is the only effective way to reach the level of such concern - to address an audience suffering from failed desire (without knowing it). Nietzsche clearly thinks we cannot understand such a possibility, much less be both shamed and inspired by it, except by a literary and so 'living' treatment of such an existential possibility. And Nietzsche clearly thinks he has such a chance, in the current historical context of crisis, collapse, boredom, and confusion, a chance of shaming and cajoling us away from commitments that will condemn us to a 'last man' or 'pale atheist' sort of existence, and of inspiring a new desire, a new 'tension' of the spirit. Hence the importance of these endless pictures and images: truth as a woman, science as gay, troubadours, tomb robbers, seduction, romance, prophets, animals, tightrope walkers, dwarves, beehives, crazy men, sleep, dreams, breeding, blonde beasts, twilight of the gods, and on and on. (It makes all the difference in the world if, having appreciated this point, we then appreciate that such notions as 'the will to power' and 'the eternal return of the same' belong on this list , are not independent 'philosophical' explanations of the meaning of the list. It is not an accident that Nietzsche often introduces these notions with the same hypothetical indirectness that he uses for the other images.) For an extensive discussion of the issue of masks in TSZ see Stanley Rosen, The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). xx Introduction
However, as in many dramatic and literary presentations of philosophy (such as Platonic dialogues, Proust's novel, Beckett's plays, and so forth) there are not only things said, but things done, and said and done by characters located somewhere and at a time, usually within a narrative time that is constantly changing contexts, conditions of appropriateness, aspects of relevance, and the like. On the face of it this means that one ought to be aware of who says what to whom when, and what is shown rather than said by what they do and what happens to them. In this case, Zarathustra had left the human world when he was thirty and stayed ten years in the mountains. We are not told why, although it is implied that he had psychologically 'burned up'; he carried his own 'ashes' up to the mountain. In the section 'The Hinterworldly' he also tells us that he managed to free himself (he does not tell us how) from the view that the finite human world was an imperfect copy of something better, 'the work of a suffering and tortured god,' that such views were a kind of disease he had recovered from, and that he now speaks of 'the meaning of the earth' (p. ). But we are not told exactly when this event occurred, before or after his voluntary exile, and the speech can be misleading unless, as just discussed above, it is read together with a number of others about selfovercoming. That is, it turns out not at all to be easy ,having abandoned a transcendent source of ideals, to live in a way true to this meaning of the earth or to understand in what sense this is a 'self-overcoming' way. The latter is not a mere 'liberationist' project, but one that in some ways is even more difficult than traditional self-denying virtue.
We also have no clear sense of what Zarathustra did all day, every day for ten years; he seemed mostly to think, contemplate, and talk to animals, especially his favorites, his snake and eagle (already an indication of a link between the low and the high in all things human). But we do know that something happened to him one day, his 'heart transformed,' and he resolved to re-enter the human world. We might assume, given Nietzsche's own diagnosis of the age, that this change was brought about by a sense of some coming crisis among humans. That is, Nietzsche is well known for calling this crisis 'nihilism,' and eventually many of Zarathustra's speeches express this urgency about our becoming the 'last human beings,' humans who can no longer 'overcome themselves.' But initially Zarathustra's return is promoted by motives that are explicit and xxi Introduction somewhat harder to understand. He had become 'weary' of the wisdom gained while in isolation and needs to distribute it, much as the sun gratuitously 'overflows' with warmth and light for humans; he would be in some way fatigued or frustrated by not being able to share this overflow. In a brief exchange with a hermit on the way down, we learn two further things about Zarathustra's motives. His generosity is prompted by a love of human beings , and those who remain in hermit-like isolation can do so only because they have not heard that 'God is dead.'
Thesereferences to love, gift-giving, and Zarathustra's potential weariness are quite important since they amount to his further figurative answers to questions about the intended function and purpose of TSZ; it is a gift of love and meant to inspire some erotic longing as well. (This assumes that Zarathustra's fate in some way allegorizes what Nietzsche expects the fate of TSZ to be and, while this seems credible, Nietzsche also ironicizes Zarathustra enough to give one pause about such an allegory.) The images suggest that the lassitude, smug self-satisfaction, and complacency that Zarathustra finds around him in the market place and later in the city define the problem he faces in the unusual way suggested above. It again suggests that what in other contexts he could call the problem of nihilism is not so much the result of some discovery, a new piece of knowledge (that God is dead, or that values are ungrounded, contingent psychological projections), nor merely a fearful failure of will, a failing that requires the rhetoric of courage, a call to a new kind of strength. As noted, the problem Zarathustra confronts seems to be a failure of desire; nobody wants what he is offering, and they seem to want very little other than a rather bovine version of happiness. It is that sort of failure that proves particularly difficult to address, and that cannot be corrected by thinking up a 'better argument' against such a failure. The events that are narrated are also clearly tied to the question of what it means for Zarathustra to have a teaching, to try to impart it to an audience suffering in this unusual way, suffering from complacency or dead desire. Only at the very beginning, in the Prologue, does he try to 'lecture publicly,' one might say, and this is a pretty unambiguous failure. He is jeered at and mocked and he leaves, saying 'I am not the mouth for these ears' (p. ). The meaning of his attempt, however, seems to be acted out in an unusual drama about a tightrope walker who mistakenly thinks he is being called to start his act, does so, and then is frightened into a fall by a 'jester' who had attempted to leap over the tightrope walker. It xxii
is not uncommon in TSZ that Zarathustra later returns to some of these early images and offers an interpretation. In Part ,inthe section called 'On Old and New Tablets,' Zarathustra remarks, This is what my great love of the farthest demands: do not spare your neighbor ! Human being is something that must be overcome. There are manifold ways and means of overcoming: you see to it! But only a jester thinks: 'human being can also be leaped over .' (p. ) This is only one of many manifestations of the importance of understanding Zarathustra's 'love' and his intimations of the great difficulty involved in his new doctrine of self-overcoming. Here it is something that must be accomplished by each (' you see to it!') and even more strikingly, the reminder here of the Prologue appears to indicate that Zarathustra himself had portrayed his own teaching in a comically inadequate way, preaching to the multitudes as if people could simply begin to overcome themselves by some revolutionary act of will, as if the overman were a new species to be arrived at by 'overleaping' the current one. We come closer here to the parodic elements of the text; in this case a kind of self-parody.
The other plot events in the book also continue to suggest a great unsettledness in Zarathustra's conception and execution of his project, rather than a confident manifesto by Nietzsche through the persona of Zarathustra. He had shifted from market place preaching to conversations with disciples in Part , and at the end of that Part he decides to forgo even that and to go back to his cave alone, and warns his disciples to 'guard' themselves against him, and even 'to be ashamed of him' (p. ). At the beginning of Part he begins to descend again, and again we hear that he is overfull and weary with his gifts and with love (the image of love has changed into something more dramatic: 'And may my torrent of love plunge into impasses!'), but now we hear something new, something absent from his first descent: he is also concerned and impatient. 'My enemies have become powerful and have distorted the image of my teaching.' He will seek out his friends and disciples again (as well as his enemies this time, he notes) but he seems to have realized that part of the problem with the dissemination of his teachings and warnings xxiii Introduction lies in him, and not just the audience. He admits that his wisdom is a 'wild' wisdom that frightens, and that he might scare everyone off, even his friends. 'If only my lioness-wisdom could learn to roar tenderly!' he laments, a lesson he clearly thinks he has not yet learned.
The crucial dramatic event in Part is what occurs near the end. Until then many of Zarathustra's themes had been similar to, or extensions of, what he had already said. Again he seeks to understand the possibility of aform of self-dissatisfaction and even self-contempt that is not based on some sense of absence or incompleteness, a natural gap or imperfection that needs to be filled or completed, and so a new goal that can be linked with a new kind of desire to 'overcome.' He discusses that issue here in terms of 'revenge,' especially against time, and he begins to worry that, with no redemptive revolutionary hope in human life, no ultimate justice in the after-life, and no realm of objective 'goods in themselves' or any natural right, human beings will come to see a finite, temporally mutable, contingent life as a kind of burden, or curse, or purposeless play, and they will exact revenge for having been arbitrarily thrown into this condition. What he means to say in the important section 'On the Tarantulas' is something he had not made clear before, least of all to himself. Indeed, he had helped create the illusion he wants to dispel. He now denies that he, Zarathustra, is a historical or revolutionary figure who will somehow save all of us from this fate, and he denies that the overman is a historical goal (in the way a prophet would foretell the coming of the redeemer) but a personal and quite elusive, very difficult new kind of ideal for each individual. In this sense TSZ can be a book for all, for anyone who is responsive to the call to self-overcoming, but for none, in the sense that it cannot offer a comprehensive reason (for anyone) to overcome themselves and cannot offer specific prescriptions. (It is striking that, although Zarathustra opens his speeches with the call for an overman, that aspect of his message virtually drops out after Part .) Indeed Zarathustra's role as such an early prophet is again part of what makes his early manifestation comic, a parodia. He is clearly pulling back from such a role: But so that I do not whirl, my friends, bind me fast to the pillar here! I would rather be a stylite than a whirlwind of revenge!
For more detail on the relation between the first two parts and the last two, see Pippin, 'Irony and Affirmation.' xxiv
Indeed, Zarathustra is no tornado or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, nevermore a tarantella dancer! (p. ) Even so, this dance of some escape from revenge is hardly an automatic affirmation of existence as such. Throughout Part , there are constant reminders of how hard this new sort of self-overcoming will be. The 'Famous Wise Men' did not know the first thing about what 'spirit' truly was: Spirit is life that itself cuts into life; by its own agony it increases its own knowledge - did you know that? And the happiness of spirit is this: to be anointed and consecrated by tears to serve as a sacrificial animal - did you know that? (p. ) Other dimensions of this 'agony,' and the failed hopes of the beginning of his project start appearing. He says that 'My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing, my virtue wearied of itself in its superabundance' (p. ). Paradoxical (to say the least) formulations arise. 'At bottom I love only life - and verily, most when I hate it!'
But he seems also to be gaining some clarity about his earlier aspirations and about the nature of the theme that plays the most important role in TSZ, 'self-overcoming.' In a passage with that name, he comments on the doctrine most associated with Nietzsche, 'the will to power.' But again everything is expressed figuratively. He says that all prior values had been placed in a 'skiff' as a result of the 'dominating will' of the inventors of such values and he suggests that this 'river of becoming' has carried those values to a disturbingly unexpected fate. He counsels these 'wisest ones' not to think of this historical and largely uncontrollable fateasdangerous and the end of good and evil; rather the river itself (not a psychological will for power on the part of the creators) is the will to power, the 'unexhausted begetting will of life,' the current of radical historical change 'upon' which or in terms of which obeying and esteeming and committing must always go on. And he notes that he has learned three things about this process. ( ) Life itself (that is the possibility of leading a life) always requires 'obedience,' that is, the possibility of commitment to a norm or goal and the capacity to sustain such commitment. xxv Introduction
( ) 'The one who cannot obey himself is commanded.' (If we do not find a way of leading our life, it will be led for us one way or another.) And ( ) 'Commanding is harder than obeying.' He then adds what is in effect afourth point to these, that the attempt to exercise such command is 'an experiment and a risk'; indeed a risk of life. He tells us that with these questions he is at the very 'heart of life and into the roots of its heart' (p. ). There, in this heartland, he again confronts the problem he had discussed earlier in many different ways, the wrong sort of self-contempt, the absence of any arrows shot beyond man, no giving birth to stars, the bovine complacency of the last human beings. He asks again, that is, the question: without possible reliance on a faith in divine purposes or natural perfections (that river has 'carried' us beyond such options), how should we now understand the possibility of the 'intellectual conscience' without which we would be beneath contempt? That is, whence the experience that we are not as we could be, that what matters to me now might not be what should matter most, that our present state, for each individual, must be 'overcome?' Why? Since the summary 'secret' that Zarathustra has learned from life is expressed this way - 'And this secret life itself spoke to me: 'Behold,' it said, 'I am that which must always overcome itself ,'' - it appears that what is at stake for him is the possibility of coming to exercise power over oneself ; that is, to lead one's life both by sustaining commitments (right 'to the death,' he often implies, suggesting that being able to lead a life in such a whole-hearted way is much more to be esteemed than merely staying alive) and by finding some way to endure the altering historical conditions of valuing, esteeming, such that one can 'overcome' the self so committed to prior values and find a way to 'will' again. One could say that what makes the 'overman' ( Ubermensch ) genuinely selftranscendingisthathecanover-comehimself,accomplishwhennecessary this self-transcending ( Selbst -Uberwindung .) He thereby has gained power 'over' himself and so
realized his will to power: That I must be struggle and becoming and purpose and the contradiction of purposes - alas, whoever guesses my will guesses also on what crooked paths it must walk! Whatever I may create and however I may love it - soon I must oppose it and my love, thus my will wants it. (pp. - ) Likewise,Zarathustrastressesthatgoodandevil,anylife-orientingnormative distinctions, are hardly everlasting; rather they 'must overcome xxvi
themselves out of themselves again and again.' That is, self-overcoming is not transcending a present state for the sake of an ideal, stable higher state (as in a naturally perfected state or any other kind of fixed telos). All aspirations to be more, better than one is, if they are possible at all in present conditions, are provisional, will always give rise to further transformed aspirations. Zarathustra's questions about this do not so much concern traditional philosophical questions about such a form of life but a much more difficult one to address: could we bear , endure such a fate? Clearly Zarathustra's own starts and stops, and the effect these have on him, are meant to raise such an issue dramatically. (And it is not at all clear that this issue is in any way resolved, or that a resolution is even relevant.)
Two other things are quite striking about these formulations. The first, as the autobiographical inflection of such passages makes clear, is that we have to see Zarathustra as embodying this struggle, and thus must note that this possibility - the heart of everything, the possibility of selfovercoming-seemstherebyalsotiedsomehowto his problemsofrhetoric, language, of audience, friends, his own loneliness, and occasional bitterness and pity. Some condition of success in self-overcoming is linked to achieving the right relation to others (and so, by implication, is inconsistent with a hermit-like, isolated life). The second emerges quickly from the first. We have to note that Zarathustra, as the embodiment of this struggle, whatever this relation to others turns out to be, is completely uninterested in gaining power over others , subjecting as much or as many as possible to his control or command. ('I lack the lion's voice for all commanding'(p. ).) Self -commanding(and,dialectically, self-obeying) are the great problems. (In fact he keeps insisting that the last thing he wants is the ability to command them. His chief problem is that whenever he hears them re-formulate what he thinks he has said or dreamt, he is either disappointed, or perhaps anxious that he does not understand his own 'doctrine'; they may be right, he may be wrong, and no intellectual conscience could sustain a commitment that was suspected of being delusory.) Even when he appears to discuss serving or mastering others, he treats it as in the service of self-mastery and so again possible self-overcoming. ('[A]nd even in the will of the serving I found the will to be master' (p. ).) There are of course other passages in Nietzsche which seem to encourage a violent upheaval, all so that the strong can rule over the weak and so forth. I have only space to say that if we use TSZ xxvii Introduction
These are less formulations of a position than fragmentary and largely programmatic aspects of Zarathustra's self-diagnosis and the cure he at least aspires to. Many philosophical questions arise inevitably. What would be amiss, lost, wrong in a life not fully or not at all 'led' by a subject? How could this aspiration towards something believed to be higher or more worthy than what one is or has now be directed ,ifall the old language of external or objective forms of normative authority is now impossible? On what grounds can one say that a desire to cultivate a different sort of self, to overcome oneself, is really in the service of a 'higher' self? Higher in what sense? What could be said to be responsible for (relied on for) securing this obedience, for helping to ward off skepticism when it arises? Under what conditions can such commitments and projects be said to lose their grip on a subject, fail, or die? In general Zarathustra does not fully accept the burden of these questions as ones he must assume. For one thing he clearly does not believe that the inspiration for such an attempt at self-direction and something like 'becoming better at becoming who one is' can be provided by an argument or a revelation or a command. One would already have had to measure oneself and one's worth against 'arguments' or 'revelation' or 'authoritative commands' for such different calls to be effective and it is to that prior, deepest level of commitment that Zarathustra, however indirectly and figuratively, is directing his rhetoric. And given the great indeterminateness of his approach, he is clearly much more interested in the qualitative characteristics of such commitments than with their content. The quality he is most interested in turns out to be extremely complex: on the one hand, 'whole-heartedness' and an absorbed or passionate 'identification' with one's higher ideal; on the other hand, a paradoxical capacity to 'let go' of such commitments and pursue other ideals when the originals (somehow) cease to serve self-overcoming and self-transcendence, when they lead to complacency and contentment. However, to come to by far the most complicated issue introduced by Zarathustra's speeches, he clearly also thinks that such qualitative considerations - the chief topic of the book, the qualitative dimensions
as a model for reading Nietzsche, and attend to issues like voice, persona, irony, and context, we will see a Nietzsche very different from the traditional one. For more on the political issues in Nietzsche, see my 'Deceit, Desire, and Democracy: Nietzsche on Modern Eros,' International Studies in Philosophy , : (March, ), pp. - . That is, better at becoming who one truly is, beyond or over one's present state. xxviii Introduction

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