Back to Unedited Philosophy Quotes and Ramblings about Intequinism.


Reader: Mr. M.D. Pienaar

Name of Book: Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Translated by: R.J. Hollingdale

Edition: 2003 3rd by Penguin

ISBN-13: 978-0-140-44923-5

Publisher: Penguin Books

Place: London, England

Original publication date: 1886

 


Table of Contents

“ INTRODUCTION “ by Michael Tanner

' Preface '

' Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers '

' Part Two: The Free Spirit '

“ Part Three: The Religious Nature “

“ Part Four: Maxims and Interludes “

“ Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals “

“ Part Six: We Scholars “

“ Part Seven: Our Virtues “

“ Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands “

“ Part Nine: What is Noble? “

“ COMMENTARY “


 

1 June 2012

 

“ INTRODUCTION “ by Michael Tanner

 

Par 2, page 8 - 9

 

“ 'From now on,' he [Nietzsche] writes of B G E [Beyond good and evil] in Ecce Homo, 'all my writings are fish-hooks: perhaps I understand fishing as well as anyone? . . . If nothing got caught I am not to blame. There were no fish . . .' . . . Again in Ecce Homo he writes of B G E that it was 'in all essentials a critique of modernity, the modern sciences, the modern arts, not even excluding modern politics'. . . In giving a critique of modernity, he is simultaneously producing an account of decadence – a term to which he was addicted, though oddly enough not in B G E, where he employs the possibly more drastic word 'degeneration'. “

 


Par 3, page 9

 

“ From The Birth of Tragedy onwards Nietzsche had produced a series of ever-deepening accounts of the ways in which cultures lose their creative drive and become decadent, and the great positive vision of Zarathustra had put him, he felt, in the strongest position for reinforcing these accounts. “

 

Self

 

According to the above Nietzsche and I have partly the same intent. I want to show how truth causes creativity and therefor we should account for truth and creativities and remunerate it. Nietzsche however argued truth is dogma. I think he argued against opinions that are classified as truths. He did not argue against basic truths. His definition of the truths he argued against was probably opinions.

 

Par 5, page 13

 

“ It must be the case that he was so concerned with the drive to truth, which philosophers ceaselessly boast of possessing to a supreme degree, that he overlooked what ought to have been for him their gratifying failure-rate. . . For, as he had argued in The Gay Science and was to argue again at greater length in The Genealogy of Morals, it was the self destructive urge of Christianity, intent on exploring to its furthest recesses the glory of God's world, that led to the discovery that explanations of natural phenomena could continue indefinitely without ever needing to call on divine assistance. “

 

Par 7, page 15

 

“ The search for truth is a dubious enterprise, it seems, both because it isn't clear that it's a good idea for us to try to live with it, and because the very notion of finding truth is in itself suspect. “

 

Self

 

The above is possibly a reference to metaphysical truths or in other words true opinions.

 

Par 7, page 15

 

“ But he has no sooner made these points than he arraigns philosophers for not really searching for truth, but for presenting as truth what they want to be the case! Is he merely asking that they should be more honest with themselves and their public? Hardly, for he attacks them, so far as their conclusions go, for inventing worlds that put this one to shame.

 

Par 7, page 16

 

“ In the end, what he accuses philosophers of is cheapness and over-simplification. In Section 9 he taunts the Stoics for perpetrating just such a 'noble' trick: ' . . . ' Nietzsche takes the Stoics to task because they provide a particularly clear example of the dishonesty and trickery that he finds pervasive in philosophy. “

 

Self

 

In section 227 he identifies with the stoics and he sees himself as one of the last stoics.



 

4 June 2012

 

Par 9, page 21

 

“ One of the characteristics of a master morality is that those who participate in it are aware of their role as creators of value. Though they differ in many other vital respects from slave moralists, their consciousness that they are responsible for the values by which they live already gives them cause for rejoicing – they are, one might say, self-important in the best sense of that term (a sense it normally lacks, indicating to what degree we ourselves are slave or herd moralists). “

 

Par 9, page 22

 

“ . . - it becomes clear that Nietzsche is attempting to formulate the conditions under which we may hope to recover a conception of greatness which we associate with creativity, at least before that term was so debased by pop psychologists and educational theorists. “

 

Par 9, page 23

 

“ We indulge in orgies of moral recrimination against those who have done most to enhance our culture, who have given us a very large part of our sense of what makes life worth living. . .It is part of our fear and anxiety in the face of greatness; one might say we take revenge on the greatness of men's works by studying their lives, prying into them with an intensity of scrutiny from which no one would emerge unscathed. “

 

25 May 2012

 

' Preface '

 

Page 32

 

' The Germans invented gun-powder – all credit to them! But they evened the score again – they invented the press. '

 

Self

 

According to my knowledge gunpowder and the press were invented in China.



 

' Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers '

 

Par 1, Page 33

 

“ The will to truth, which is still going to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise; that celebrated veracity of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with reverence: what questions this will to truth has already set before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! It is already a long story – yet does it not seem as if it has only just begun? Is it any wonder we should at last grow distrustful, lose our patience, turn impatiently away? That this sphinx should teach us too to ask questions? Who really is it that here questions us? What really is it in us that wants 'the truth'? - We did indeed pause for a long time before the question of the origin of this will – until finally we came to a complete halt before an even more fundamental question.  We asked after the value of this will. Granted we wanted truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? - The problem of the value of truth stepped before us – or was it we who stepped before this problem? Which of us is Oedipus here? Which of us sphinx? It is it seems, a rendezvous of questions and question-marks. - And, would you believe it, it has finally almost come to seem to us that this problem has never before been posed – that we have been the first to see it, to fix our eye on it, to hazard it? For there is a hazard in it and perhaps there exists no greater hazard. “

 

Par 2, Page 33 - 34

 

“ ' How could something originate in its antithesis? Truth in error, for example? Or will to truth in will to deception? . . Such origination is impossible; he who dreams of it is a fool, indeed worse than a fool; the things of the highest value must have another origin of their own – they cannot be derivable from this transitory, seductive, deceptive, mean little world, from this confusion of desire and illusion! In the womb of being, rather, in the intransitory, in the hidden god, in the “thing in itself” - that is where their cause must lie and nowhere else!' - This mode of judgement constitutes the typical prejudices by which metaphysicians of all ages can be recognized; this mode of evaluation stands in the background of all their logical procedures; it is on account of this their 'faith' that they concern themselves with their 'knowledge', with something that is at last solemnly baptized 'the truth'. The fundamental faith of the metaphysicians is the faith in antithetical values. “

 

Self

 

Truths exist partly because of faiths in God; faiths in God give a group the strength to create and to oppose evil deceit that gathers those creations, without paying. Persons who deceive, need partners because they are not strong enough, without God, to survive, without partners. Honest persons, with God, do not need partners as regularly as deceiving persons. Honest people are part of God that is metaphysical and unexplainable. Honest people do not need to formally form a group because they are a group naturally. Deceiving people have to swear alliances and make oaths to hide the deeds that make them group together formally.

 

Par 2, page 34

 

“ With all the value that may adhere to the true, the genuine, the selfless, it could be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for all life might have to be ascribed to appearance, to the will to deception, to selfishness and to appetite. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and honoured things resides precisely in their being artfully related, knotted and crocheted to these wicked, apparently antithetical things, perhaps even in their being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! - But who is willing to concern himself with such dangerous perhapses! For that we have to await the arrival of a new species of philosopher, one which possesses tastes and inclinations opposite to and different from those of its predecessors – philosophers of the dangerous 'perhaps' in every sense. - And to speak in all seriousness: I see such new philosophers arising. “

 

Self

 

It seems Nietzsche refers here to criminality as dangerous. The higher the risk to the self the higher the return for the self according to American finance theory. Maybe in his time the majority was honest and it was a big risk to go against the grain of the honest majority. Currently it is dangerous to go against the grain of the dishonest majority. In Human, All Too Human (1878), I remember, Nietzsche wrote that basic truths are subscribed to by men with courage. Maybe it does not matter what a man subscribe to, he will always think it courageous. Courage seems to thus be a common denominator men of all subscriptions value high. Socrates also valued courage as one of the best attributes. Socrates defined courage in the sense of war. I argue that honesties take courage as Nietzsche argued in Human, All Too Human because I currently think honest people (creators) are sacrificed by society.



 

29 May 2012

 

Par 10, page 40

 

“ The zeal and subtlety, I might even say slyness, with which the problem 'of the real and apparent world' is set upon all over Europe today makes one think hard and prick up one's ears; and anyone who hears in the background only a 'will to truth' and nothing more, certainly does not enjoy the best of hearing. “

 

Self

 

It is not clear what Nietzsche thought. It seems he was not sure about the actualities of the time. The God thought, I think, influenced him according to German Christian philosophy. Here Jesus in German according to my current knowledge is Herr Jesus. Herr is the singular and Here (Afrikaans) is plural. Thus Spoke Zarathustra was about the Persian God, Ahura Mazda, the ' Lord of Wisdom ' or ' Lord of Truth ' according to the Internet a few days ago. The singular God was thus foremost in Nietzsche's mind. I think that is why he became insane because how can a human reconcile a drive to truths with a world in which only One is God. “Elohim Emet” the Israel God of Truth is in the plural according to Prof. A. Pienaar. My opinion, due to what I have experienced, is that there are others that share the drive to truths with me. It could be asked then what is the best belief system. A belief in a singular person as God or the belief in more than one person as God. It feels like a paradox. Let's say that the overarching aim is creativity in a territory. Elohim Emet will  then cause more creativity than Zarathustra because there is then a group of honest people who can exchange information and create with actualities. If only one honest person, Zarathustra, is left in a territory, that person cannot create in a physical sense because there is no-one else to help. Such a character cannot be everywhere in a territory at once to give instructions in a physical world. Metaphysically, a belief in a character like Zarathustra or a Messiah (One), puts a higher value on truths than a belief in Elohim Emet because then a belief exist that says even if only one stays honest, truths represented by only One, will be the strongest. Stronger than a whole deceitful society. A third belief is relevant; that no human is part of God and honesties has nothing to do with God. God is separate from us and we should just be honest without involving God thoughts. This belief is probably the most realistic under conditions where God thoughts do not exist, however, in the current world circumstances, in which Christian, Muslim and Jewish Messiah thoughts are relevant, I doubt that this belief could be relevant. Actuality is that God thoughts about One exist. Practically, therefore, the best belief to maximise honesty, in order to maximise competitiveness and creativity is currently a belief in honest men and women. All who are part of such a belief have to see themselves as part of a group called God in order to motivate faiths, necessary to be honest in a corrupt society. Elohim Emet is according to the Internet masculine. My feeling currently is that if God is a group, the group should include men and women who have courage. It is partly a question of power due to creativity. It is a metaphysical problem because it is not sure whether a women can have the courage to be honest enough to be part of God. Maybe that is why Elohim Emet is masculine only. I think currently that women can have the courage to be honest because, there is not  much difference between men and women, meaning that a man's ability to resist a big group is relatively speaking not much different from a women's ability. One person has no physical power against a group if that group targets that individual. Whether that individual is a man or a women makes not much difference. Gideon killed 100s with a bone but if the majority WANTED to and had the COURAGE to kill Gideon they could have done it easily. A belief in One human only as part of God is dependent on metaphysical factors because one physicality is weaker than a plurality of physicalities.

 

Par 10, page 40 to 41

 

I get the impression from the last part of paragraph 10 that there were groups of positivists that Nietzsche did not like; “ . . the disgust of a more fastidious taste at the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters in whom there is nothing new or genuine except this motleyness. “ Groups who believed in basic scientific truths without being influenced by metaphysical God thoughts. Maybe these people believed not in metaphysical truthfulness but only in honesties and actualities when it applies to work and science. They perhaps separated actualities within their group from the rest of the world to have an advantage over other groups who also had their own common-wealths according to John Locke's philosophy.



 

Par 11, page 41

 

“ Kant asked himself: how are synthetic judgements a priory possible? - and what, really, did he answer? By means of a faculty: but unfortunately not in a few words, but so circumspectly, venerably, and with such an expenditure of German profundity and flourishes that the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer was overlooked. People even lost their heads altogether on account of this new faculty, and the rejoicing reached its climax when Kant went on further to discover a moral faculty in man – for in that time the Germans were still moral and by no means practitioners of Realpolitik. “

 

Self

 

The above makes it look as if Nietzsche thought on that day that Germans were generally immoral during his time.

 

Par 11, page 42

 

“ . . it is high time to replace the Kantian question 'how are synthetic judgements a priori possible?', with another question: 'why is belief in such judgements necessary?' - that is to say, it is time to grasp that, for the purpose of preserving beings such as ourselves, such judgements must be believed to be true; although they might of course still be false judgements! Or more clearly, crudely and basically: synthetic judgements a priori should not 'be possible' at all: we have no right to them, in our mouths they are nothing but false judgements. But belief in their truth is, of course, necessary as foreground belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective optics of life. “

 

Self

 

See Popper's Two Fundamental Problems of The Theory of Knowledge.

 

Par 13, page 44

 

“ Physiologists should think again before postulating the drive to self-preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being. A living thing desires above all to vent its strength – life as such is will to power - : self-preservation is only of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it. - In short, here as everywhere, beware of superfluous teleological principles! - such as is the drive to self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). For this is a requirement of method, which has essentially to be economy of principles. “

 

New Oxford American Dictionary – Apple computer

 

“ teleological argument |ˌtelēəˈläjikəl; ˌtēlē- |

noun Philosophy

the argument for the existence of God from the evidence of order, and hence design, in nature. Compare with argument from design , cosmological argument , and ontological argument . “

 

Self

 

I think now that Nietzsche's philosophy can be summarized as a rebellion against the thought that he could be God in the sense of Ahura Mazda, Lord of Truth, Lord of Wisdom. He struggled perhaps with that thought because he was an honest person. How to deal with that thought when honesty is important to a person is difficult. I currently deal with that God thought by believing that God includes all honest people or that no human is God and that honesty is a necessity for creativity and survival and for human genetic logics and positive evolution. By positive evolution I mean to stay part, through generations, of the specie who controls the world and to not become animal due to reverse evolution. I assume of course that I am part of the specie below God that controls most daily matters on Earth and its vicinity.



 

Par 16, page 46

 

“ Let the people believe that knowledge is total knowledge, but the philosopher must say to himself: when I analyse the event expressed in the sentence 'I think', I acquire a series of rash assertions which are difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove – for example, that it is I who think, that it has to be something at all which thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of an entity thought of as a cause, that an 'I' exists, finally that what is designated by 'thinking' has already been determined – that I know what thinking is. “

 

“ In place of that 'immediate certainty' in which the people may believe in the present case, the philosopher acquires in this way a series of metaphysical questions, true questions of conscience for the intellect, namely: 'Whence do I take the concept thinking? Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an “I”, and even of an “I” as cause, and finally of an “I” as cause of thought? Whoever feels able to answer these metaphysical questions straight away with an appeal of intuitive knowledge, as he does who says: 'I think, and know that this at least is true, actual and certain' – will find a philosopher today ready with a smile and two question-marks. 'My dear sir,' the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, 'it is improbable you are not mistaken: but why do you want the truth at all? - 17 “

 

Par 17, page 47

 

“ As for the superstitions of the logicians, I shall never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit – namely, that a thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want; so that it is a falsification of the facts to say: the subject 'I' is the condition of the predicate 'think'. It thinks: but that this 'it' is precisely that famous old 'I' is, to put it mildly, only an assumption, an assertion, above all not an 'immediate certainty'. For even with this 'it thinks' one has already gone too far: this 'it' already contains an interpretation of the event and does not belong to the event itself. “

 

Self

 

The above statement or “ fact “ is a material mistake Nietzsche made. As written in Management Accounting of Intellectual Creations (JETEMS, February 2012, Internet publication) pre-knowledges are deductively, necessary for most thoughts. I think therefore I can assert that thoughts settle partly in a person because of the knowledge he acquired previously by studying, doing, venturing etc.

 

31 May 2012

 

Par 19, page 48

 

“ Thirdly, will is not only a complex of feeling and thinking, but above all an affect (sic): and in fact the affect (sic) of command. What is called 'freedom of will' is essentially the affect (sic) of superiority over him who must obey: 'I am free, “he” must obey' – this consciousness adheres to every will, as does that tense attention, that straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, that unconditional evaluation 'this and nothing else is necessary now', that inner certainty that one will be obeyed, and whatever else pertains to the state of him who gives commands. “

 

Self

 

It does not sound right here to put “ the “ and “ a “ in front of the verb “ affect “. Maybe it should have been effect.



 

Par 19, page 49

 

“ Because in the great majority of cases willing takes place only where the effect of the command, that is to say obedience, that is to say the action, was to be expected, the appearance has translated itself into the sensation, as if there were here a necessity of effect. “

 

Self

 

Maybe in German a or the can be used in front of a verb for example when being is used as an important verb as in “ Being and Time “ by Heidegger. Being and time can be verbs. The drummers time the percussion and in German verbs are also capitalized sometimes. Labours and verbs are given great importance when becomings are investigated.

 

Par 20, page 50

 

“ Philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (in which the concept of the subject is least developed) will in all probability look 'into the world' differently and be found on different paths from the Indo-Germans and Moslems: the spell of definite grammatical functions is in the last resort the spell of physiological value judgements and racial conditions. - So much by way of retort to Locke's superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas. “

 

Par 21, page 51-52

 

“ And, if I have observed correctly, 'unfreedom of will' is in general conceived as a problem from two completely antithetical standpoints but always in a profoundly personal manner: one will at no price give up his 'responsibility', his belief in himself, the personal right to his deserts (the vain races belong here - ), the other, on the contrary, will not be responsible for anything, to blame for anything, and out of an inner self-contempt wants to be able to shift off his responsibility for himself somewhere else. This latter, when he writes books, tends today to espouse the cause of the criminal; his most pleasing disguise is a kind of socialist sympathy. And the fatalism of the weak-willed is indeed beautified to an astonishing degree when it can present itself as 'la religion de la souffrance humaine': that is its 'good taste'. “

 

1 June 2012

 

' Part Two: The Free Spirit '

 

Par 24, page 55

 

“ O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplifications and falsification mankind lives in! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambolling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life! And only on this now firm and granite basis of ignorance has knowledge hitherto been able to rise up, the will to knowledge on the basis of a far more powerful will, the will to non-knowledge, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its antithesis but – as its refinement! For even if, here as elsewhere, language cannot get over its coarseness and continues to speak of antithesis where there are only degrees and many subtleties of gradation; even if likewise the incarnate tartuffery of morals which is now part of our invincible 'flesh and blood' twists the words in the mouths even of us men of knowledge: here and there we grasp that fact and laugh at how it is precisely the best knowledge that wants most to hold us in this simplified, altogether artificial, fabricated, falsified world, how willy-nilly in love with error because, as a living being, it is – in love with life! “

 

Self

 

The above is probably a reference to Genesis and the view to knowledge in Genesis. I cannot however agree that untruth was part of the culture in Genesis within which the cheerfulness should have been enjoyed. It makes more sense that the culture or dogma that was meant to be, in Genesis was dogma of truth. The fall became relevant when untruth came into the picture with the snake? Untruth and consequentialism is a drive to self-preservation only and not to preservation of all that is good. The above statement by Nietzsche could be proof that he was honest, but that is a paradox because how can a person belief honesty is important and live it whilst he says a different thing about others' way of living? It makes sense if Nietzsche did not belief that he and others necessarily should follow the same philosophy. If he was honest in saying that others should lie, then it is possible that amongst honest people there could be a tempter, which, according to Roman Catholic belief make that person part of evil. I am not willing now to classify Nietzsche as part of evil for the temptations he set. The possibility however now exist that honest people can be divided in two groups. Those who believe only self and closest should be honest and all others, deceivers. Also, those who belief everyone should be honest without being a temptation to others. Although Nietzsche seems honest, the above could signify the split between honest people into two categories. Nietzsche promoted a will to power. Maybe he truly believed that he and others should follow untruth (not one human in his mind?) but he was not willing to self take that step because he honestly says it, but did he do it. Because of Thus spoke Zarathustra, one may wonder who was “ Lord “ in Nietsche's mind. Was it himself, because I have not yet seen him acting deceitfully or did he predict a living “ Superman “. Jaspers predicted the rise of many super people because, according to me now, he is still the closest to reality with his philosophy.

 

According to Nietzsche the gradation of truths that we put into the world is relevant, starting let's say at 97% and lower. Such a test will have to balance with clean (without mindful hindrances of deceits) acquired knowledge and memory because without pre-knowledge logic does not have relevant use. It could be a written test or polygraph test with one question. Are you an honest person? Or, am I an honest person? Honesties could be percentages above 50% and deceit percentages below 50%. According to the polygraph specialist I spoke to recently, Americans and Russians have tried to test honesties but failed.



 

Par 25, page 55

 

“ After so cheerful an exordium a serious word would like to be heard: it adresses itself to the most serious. Take care philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering 'for the sake of truth'! Even of defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience, it makes you obstinate against rebuffs and red rags, it makes you stupid, brutal and bullish if in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, casting out and even grosser consequences of hostility you finally even have to act as defenders of truth on earth – as if 'truth' were so innocuous and inept a person she stood in need of defending! . . choose the good solitude, the free, wanton easy solitude which gives you to a right to remain in some sense good! How poisonous, how cunning how bad every protracted war makes one when it cannot be waged with open force! . . These outcasts of society, long persecuted and sorely hunted – also the enforced recluses, the Spinozas and Giordano Brunos – in the end always become refined vengeance seekers and brewers of poison, even if they do so under the most spiritual masquerade and perhaps without being themselves aware of it . . . degenerated into 'martyr', into stage- and platform-ranter). But if one does harbour such a desire, one has to be clear what it is one will get to see – merely a satyr play, merely a farcical after-piece, merely a continuing proof that the long tragedy has come to an end: supposing that every philosophy was in its inception a long tragedy. - “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche opposes the concept truth at metaphysical levels because truth is not a person. At metaphysical levels opinions are relevant and truths become very subjective. He thus refers to men who refers to truth as a person, a women. He says “ as if [own bold italics] 'truth' were so . . a person she stood in need of defending! “ (See par. 33)

 

This book was written in 1886, three years before they say Nietzsche became insane. It seems Nietzsche believed he was foolish in his younger years because he thought in 1886, he defended truths when he was younger. Here he refers to truth, with a non-capitalised t, as a lady and not a concept. Who knows? Maybe, if he chose a non-neutral stance when he wrote in 1886 he would not today have been accused of being Dionysus one day and Apollo another day and perhaps he would not have had become insane. It seems that in 1886, if he believed in his earlier years that “ Lord “ as current living man is possible, he did not believe it any more. If he believed in more than one honest person and not only in “ Lord “ he could have had a better life, like Jaspers.

 

Par 26, page 58

 

“ Cynicism is the only form in which common souls come close to honesty; and the higher man must prick up his ears at every cynicism, whether coarse or refined, and congratulate himself whenever a buffoon without shame or a scientific satyr speaks out in his presence. “

 

“ And no one lies so much as the indignant man. - “

 

Par 30, page  61

 

“ There are heights of the soul seen from which even tragedy ceases to be tragic; and, taking all the woe of the world together, who could venture to assert that the sight of it would have to seduce and compel us to pity and thus to a doubling of that woe? . . . [full stops quoted] What serves the higher type of man as food or refreshment must to a very different and inferior type be almost poison “

 

Self

 

Not clear what he meant. Was he referring to himself as either master or slave or was he completely neutral? I remember, somewhere he referred to neutrality, as desired, but I did not quote it. See below quote about nuance.

 

Par 31, page 62

 

“ In our youthful years we respect and despise without that art of nuance which constitutes the best thing we gain from life, and, as is only fair, we have to pay dearly for having assailed men and things with Yes and No in such a fashion. “

 

“ The anger and reverence characteristic of youth seem to allow themselves no peace until they have falsified men and things in such a way that they can vent themselves in them – youth as such is something that falsifies and deceives. “

 

Self

 

I said sometimes that “seker so” meaning “dalk so”. If I said “seker” it would have meant the oppisite of dalk. The word “so” thus in my personal language, and maybe others' too, changes the meaning in my mind. Is it perhaps to this usage of language that Nietzsche refers to above in context with youth?



 

Par 32, page 63

 

“ . . . when among us immoralists at least the suspicion has arisen that the decisive value of an action resides in precisely that which is not intentional in it, . . “

 

Par 32, page 64

 

“ The overcoming of morality, in a certain sense even the self-overcoming of morality: let this be the name for that protracted secret labour which has been reserved for the subtlest, most honest and also most malicious consciences as living touchstones of the soul. - “

 

Self

 

If truths are not implemented, with honest speech, can a person come to truths in a metaphysical sense? Being reborn again and again? Metaphysical reasoning looks at a wider view than physical reasoning. The view of metaphysical reasoning includes own thoughts, own memories and histories in mind and deceits are included in this view; disinformation could be mistaken for information with a subsequent tainting of metaphysical truths.

 

Par 33, page 64 (See par 22)

 

“ There is nothing for it: the feelings of devotion, self-sacrifice for one's neighbour, the entire morality of self-renunciation must be taken mercilessly to task and brought to court: likewise the aesthetics of 'disinterested contemplation' through which the emasculation of art today tries, seductively enough, to give itself a good conscience. There is much too much sugar and sorcery in those feelings of 'for others', of 'not for me', for one not to have to become doubly distrustful here and to ask: 'are they not perhaps – seductions?'

 

Self

 

Nietzsche here looks for a deeper truth of metaphysics. He argues that the culture is untruthful because even if one says something is done for the other, in essence it is done for self to feel good. The problem he has is that it is not done openly for self. Again it looks as if he was looking for a more direct truth even though he says subtlety is the best attribute a person can acquire.

 

Par 34, page 65

 

“ It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance; it is even the worst-proved assumption that exists. Let us concede at least this much: there would be no life at all if not on the basis of perspective evaluations and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and awkwardness exhibited by some philosophers, one wanted to abolish the 'apparent world' altogether, well, assuming you could do that – at any rate nothing would remain of your 'truth' either! Indeed, what compels us to assume there exists any essential antithesis between 'true' and 'false'? Is it not enough to suppose grades of apparentness and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones of appearance – different valuers, so to speak in the language of painters?

 

4 June 2012

 

Par 34, page 66

 

“ All due respect to governesses: but is it not time that philosophy renounced the beliefs of governesses?

 

35

 

Oh Voltaire! Oh humanity! Oh imbecility! There is some point to 'truth', to the search for truth; and if a human being goes about too humanely – 'il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien' – I wager he finds nothing! “

 

Google translation on 4 June 2012: “ it seeks true that for good “ = “ 'il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien' “

 

Self

 

The above statement supports the thought that Nietzsche's writings about truth is not simple. He was not sure about the value of truth. Compare the above statement with the opinion by Michael Tanner on pages 8 – 9 about fish-hooks.



 

Par 36, page 66 - 67

 

“ Granted that nothing is 'given' as real except our world of desires and passions, that we can rise or sink to no other 'reality' than the reality of our drives – for thinking is only the relationship of these drives to one another - : is it not permitted to make the experiment and ask the question whether this which is given does not suffice for an understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or 'material') world? I do not mean as a deception, an 'appearance' an 'idea' (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhaueran sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves – as a more primitive form of the world of emotions in which everything still lies locked in mighty unity and then branches out and develops in the organic process (also, as is only fair, is made weaker and more sensitive), as a kind of instinctual life in which all organic functions, together with self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, metabolism, are still synthetically bound together – as an antecedent form of life? - In the end, it is not merely permitted to make the experiment: it is commanded by the conscience of method. Not to assume several kinds of causality so long as the experiment of getting along with one has not been taken to its ultimate limits (- to the point of nonsense, if I may say so): that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays – it follows 'from its definition', as a mathematician would say. In the end, the question is whether we really recognize will as efficient, whether we believe in the causality of will: if we do so – and fundamentally belief in this is precisely our belief in causality itself – then we have to make the experiment of positing causality of will hypothetically as the only one. 'Will' can of course operate only on 'will' – and not on 'matter' (not on 'nerves', for example -): enough, one must venture the hypothesis that whatever 'effects' are recognized, will is operating on will – and that all mechanical occurrences, in so far as a force is active in them, are force of will, effects of will. - Granted finally that one succeeded in explaining our entire instinctual life as the development and ramification of one basic form of will – as will to power, as is my theory - ; granted that one could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and could also find in it the solution to the problem of procreation and nourishment – they are one problem – one would have acquired the right to define all efficient force unequivocally as: will to power. The world seen from within, the world described and defined according to its 'intelligible character' – it would be 'will to power' and nothing else. -

 

37

 

'What? Does that, to speak vulgarly, not mean: God is refuted but the devil is not - ?' On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil compels you to speak vulgarly! - “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche previously blamed philosophers for their opinions they spread as truths. In the above statement he rhetorically states his opinion.

 

Par 39 (Section 39), page 68

 

“ Perhaps severity and cunning provide more favourable conditions for the formation of the strong, independent spirit and philosopher than does that gentle, sweet, yielding good-naturedness and art of taking things lightly which is prized in a scholar and rightly prized. “

 

Self

 

It seems in 1886 Nietzsche had not made up his mind about where power settles, in leading groups or in misleading groups. Will WE ever know?

 

Section 43, page 71

 

“ Are they new friends of 'truth', these coming philosophers? In all probability: for all philosophers have hitherto loved their truths. But certainly they will not be dogmatists. It must offend their pride, and also their taste, if their truth is supposed to be a truth for everyman, which has hitherto been the secret desire and hidden sense of all dogmatic endeavours. 'My judgement is my judgement: another cannot easily acquire a right to it' – such a philosopher of the future may perhaps say. One has to get rid of the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with many. 'Good' is no longer good when your neighbour takes it into his mouth. And how could there exist a 'common good'! The expression is a self-contradiction: what can be common has ever but little value. In the end it must as it is and has always been: great things are for the great, abysses for the profound, shudders and delicacies for the refined, and, in sum, all rare things for the rare. - “



 

“ Part Three: The Religious Nature “

 

Section 48, page 78

 

“ 'Disons donc hardiment que la religion est un produit de l'homme normal, que l'homme est le plus dans le vrai quand il est le plus religieux et le plus assure d'une destinee infinie . . .C'est quand il est bon qu'il veut que la vertu corresponde a une ordre eternelle, c'est quand il contemple les choses d'une maniere desinteressee qu'il trouve la mort revoltante et absurde. Comment ne pas supposer que c'est dans ces moments-la, que l'homme voit le mieux?' (“ So let us say boldly that religion is a product of the normal man, that man is the more correct when it is the most religious and most responsible of a destiny infinite. . . This is when it is good that he wants a match under the eternal order is when he looks at things in a disinterested way he finds death revolting and absurd. How not to assume that it is in these moments of that man sees best? “ - Google translation) These words are so totally antipodal to my ears and habits that when I discovered them my immediate anger wrote beside them 'la niaiserie religieuse par excellence!' (“ the religious foolishness par excellence! “ - Google translation) “

 

Section 60, page 85

 

' To love men for the sake of God – that has been the noblest and most remote feeling attained to among men up till now. That love of man without some sanctifying ulterior objective is one piece of stupidity and animality more, that the inclination to this love of man has first to receive its measure, its refinement, its grain of salt and drop of amber from higher inclination – whatever man it was who first felt and 'experienced' this, however much his tongue may have faltered as it sought to express such a delicate thought, let him be holy and venerated to us for all time as the man who has soared the highest and gone the most beautifully astray! “

 

Self

 

This seems like a reference to Jesus. If Nietzsche understood love to mean within legality maybe he would not have written it. How he thought Jesus defined love, is not certain now.

 

Section 62, page 87

 

“ Among men, as among every other species, there is a surplus of failures, of the sick, the degenerate, the fragile, of those who are bound to suffer; the successful cases are, among men too, always the exception, and, considering that man is the animal whose nature has not yet been fixed, the rare exception. “

 

“ Part Four: Maxims and Interludes “

 

Section 65, 65a, 66 page 90

 

“ 65

 

The charm of knowledge would be small if so much shame did not have to be overcome on the road to it.

 

65a

 

One is most dishonest towards one's God: he is not permitted to sin

 

66

 

The inclination to disparage himself, to let himself be robbed, lied to and exploited, could be the self-effacement of a god among men. “

 

Self

 

The above shows that Nietzsche believed the human nature of God is singular. As in Herr Jesus of the Bible. [After reading the whole book I think now that Nietzsche thought about god in a Greek way. Many human gods. He did however in the end of the book and at section 101 use God with a capital letter.]



 

Section 101, page 95

 

“ Today a man of knowledge might easily feel as if he were God become animal. “

 

Section 108, page 96

 

“ There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena . . . “

 

Section 116, page 97

 

“ The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities. “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche did not belief in Jesus' love of not breaking the law, but he respected Jesus.

 

Section 121, page 98

 

“It was a piece of subtle refinement that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer – and that he did not learn it better. “

 

5 June 2012

 

Section 128, page 99

 

“ The more abstract the truth you want to teach the more you must seduce the senses to it. “

 

Section 129, page 99

 

“ The devil has the widest perspectives for God, and that is why he keeps so far away from him – the devil being the oldest friend of knowledge. “

 

Section 134, page 100

 

“ All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth comes only from the senses. “

 

Section 141, page 101

 

“ The belly is the reason man does not so easily take himself for a god. “

 

Section 142, page 101

 

“ The chastest expression I have ever heard: 'Dans le veritable amour c'est l'ame, qui enveloppe le corps.' “

 

Google translation: “ In true love is the soul, which envelops the body. “

 

Section 150, page 102

 

“ Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy, around the demi-god a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes – what? Perhaps a 'world'? - “



 

Section 154, page 103

 

“ Objection, evasion, happy distrust, pleasure in mockery are signs of health: everything unconditional belongs in pathology. “

 

Section 157, page 103

 

“ The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night. “

 

Section 158, page 103

 

“ To our strongest drive, the tyrant in us, not only our reason but also our conscience submits. “

 

Self

 

157 and 158 perhaps show thoughts of “ moor en selfmoord ” which I have and mentioned to UNISA after victimisation by a group of colleagues. I am now working at home because the same group said I should not be allowed on campus without security accompanying me.

 

Section 164, page 104

 

“ Jesus said to his Jews: 'The law was made for servants – love God as I love him, as his son! What have we sons of God to do with morality!' - “

 

Self

 

The above sentence I do not remember reading in the Bible after I read the Bible 4 times from beginning to end. I remember the opposite. When they asked Jesus what does love God and neighbour means he answered. Loving God and neighbour is a summary of the law, thus I understood it to mean that love means to not break the law. It is the opposite of what Nietzsche thought Jesus said. Maybe Jesus contradicted himself in time as he changed his mind. He expanded the neighbourly love to Samaritans and thus to all people or to all Israelites.

 

Section 166, page 105

 

“ You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth. “

 

Self

 

Somewhere else Nietzsche wrote that advanced cultures are better at upholding the correspondence theory of truth and here he ignores the correspondence theory of truth for a subjective opinionated truth. In the beginning of the book I understood him to say that it is such subjective opinionated truths that he dislikes in philosophers.

 

Section 168, page 105

 

“ Christianity gave Eros poison to drink – he did not die of it, to be sure, but degenerated into vice. “

 

Self

 

The above could be a valid claim against a religion that seeks God as One person or belief God has no human part, because in the process they cause a degeneration of people who try to be good because they believe in essence that people are evil and the belief then becomes a prediction which becomes true because of degenerations due to stresses and survival actions. It seems it is caused by materialism. People who do not uphold truths gang up against creators to increase their own material wealth. If they allow creators to create more and allow more creators to exist and become creators themselves there will be more creativity and more wealth to share by people in a territory.



 

Section 171, page 105

 

“ Pity in a man of knowledge seems almost ludicrous, like sensitive hands on a cyclops. “

 

Section 183, page 107

 

“ 'Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you – that is what has distressed me -.' “

 

Self

 

We emphasise the importance of the correspondence theory of truth in every day language when we say we cannot trust someone anymore because we can not BELIEVE what they say. BELIEVE is central to religion and therefore truths are the predicate of the sentence ' I believe your words (truths) and trust your words (truths) to be true. ' Words (truths) are thus the object of the verb believe and the subject believes another person's words (truths). The opinion that John had of truth as a name of the returned Christ in the translated Revelation 19:11 cannot be valid when truth is understood in the sense of the correspondence theory of truth. Is Mat an object in the sentence ' John believes Mat '? ' Mat ' implies Mat's words. The word Theo (God) in Greek changed its meaning and probably ' the ' comes from Theo as in The Lord. The word truths has thus lost its meaning in English and ' waar ' in Afrikaans and cannot be used anymore to mean actualities according to the correspondence theory **. Truths still has an implication of true intentions because when God is discussed the speaker of an opinion should have true intentions. Dialogical, dialectical dependencies exist during discussions and thoughts. If dialogical (non-contradictory) dependencies do not exist on true intentions of a speaker, then discussions about God are not in good faith. Good faith means to share a truth, for the good of the listener. To share something the listener can use for his own good. This is a paradoxical thought because many people would say they would not want my life, which my conception of God brought me. Own good thus has to mean own good in a metaphysical and not a materialistic sense? But do I really want to share my faith to benefit others in a metaphysical sense. In a metaphysical sense One becomes more relevant because let's say it refers to the repopulation of all y-chromosomes of humans. Why would I then want to share my secret? It does not refer to that, because I am not certain about my metaphysical beliefs. It is about now and here and actualities that benefit us all due to resulting creativities. That is why I am doing this research. I am doing it for US (WE) as a group. ** Realities has also lost that correspondence meaning because of the English saying ' Your reality '. The word actualities has not been tainted in my mind and therefore I will use actualities when I refer to corresponding matters. Truths will be used in subjective opinionated meanings with true intentions. I should thus search for the words actuality and reality as well, especially in modern book indexes, to see if the writer discussed the object of actualities (at different places and different times). The plural and the singular are relevant. Many subjective truths lead to the use of the plural at truths more readily than at actualities. An argument can be made up that actuality can be used in the singular over times because facts do not contradict. Actuality is thus an(e) or one integrated whole which we cannot know, but our reasoning (for all practical matters?), tells that non-contradiction exists.

 

Section 184, page 107

 

“ There is a wild spirit of good-naturedness which looks like malice. “

 

Self

 

What is this malice Nietzsche refers to? Section 183 shows to me he hurt someone because it is someone else (or himself) he quoted and in 184 he tries to vindicate himself for lieing. At section 171 he vindicates cruelty as an attribute of knowledgeable people. Did he take belief in his own knowledge too far like consequentialists do who lie for gain? Should he not have stopped his consequentialist thoughts there where I think Kant stopped? At the categorical imperatives and laws we should not break, which indicates love (not breaking the law) in a person.

 

Section 185, page 107

 

“ 'I do not like it.' - Why? - 'I am not up to it.' - Has anyone ever answered like that? “

 

Self

 

I think now, that in my belief system, Nietzsche represents the other side. He was torn between two sides and he had not yet become one or the other when he wrote this book. Every person should decide self what he/she wants to achieve. It is not up to Nietzsche or any other knowledgeable man/women to decide on another's behalf what tests that person should be subjected to. From the statements above it seems that Nietzsche thought himself the rightful master of slaves whom he could inspire through pain to higher achievements. He wrote about a master mentality and a slave mentality. I appreciate his view of capitalist behaviour and communist behaviour in that sense but he did not understand the antithetical actual long term results of deceits.



 

“ Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals “

 

Section 186, page 108 - 109

 

“ Philosophers one and all have, with a strait-laced seriousness that provokes laughter, demanded something much higher more pretentious, more solemn of themselves as soon as they have concerned themselves with morality as a science: they wanted to furnish the rational ground of morality – and every philosopher hitherto has believed he has furnished this rational ground; morality itself, however, was taken as 'given'. How far from their clumsy pride was that apparently insignificant task left in dust and mildew, the task of description, although the most delicate hands and senses could hardly be delicate enough for it! It was precisely because moral philosophers knew the facts of morality only somewhat vaguely in an arbitrary extract or as a chance abridgement, as morality of their environment, their class and zone of the earth, for instance – it was precisely because they were ill informed and not even very inquisitive about other peoples, ages and former times, that they did not so much as catch sight of the real problems of morality – for these come into view only if we compare many moralities. . . What philosophers called 'the rational ground of morality' and sought to furnish was, viewed in the proper light, only a scholarly form of faith in the prevailing morality, a new way of expressing it, and thus itself a fact within a certain morality, indeed even in the last resort a kind of denial that this morality ought to be conceived of as a problem – and in any event the opposite of a testing, analysis, doubting and vivisection of this faith. Hear, for example, with what almost venerable innocence Schopenhauer still presented his task, and draw your own conclusions as to how scientific a 'science' is whose greatest masters still talk like children and old women: - 'The principle', he says (Fundamental Problems of Ethics),

 

the fundamental proposition on whose content all philosophers of ethics are actually at one: neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, juva [Google translation: never to injure anyone, or rather all, as far as you can, avail without] – is actually the proposition of which all the teachers of morals endeavour to furnish the rational ground . . . the actual foundation of ethics which has been sought for centuries like the philosopher's stone.

 

- The difficulty of furnishing the rational ground for the above-quoted proposition may indeed be great – as is well known, Schopenhauer too failed to do it -; and he who has ever been certain how insipidly false and sentimental this proposition is in a world whose essence is will to power – may like to recall that Schopenhaur, although a pessimist, actually – played the flute . . . “

 

Self

 

[Hurting people have to be remembered, maybe that is the rational reason not to hurt others.] Not hurting others was the earlier thesis of morality according to Nietzsche but was never questioned. He said it was an unquestioned faith. His research and his writings was an antithesis of philosophical traditional beliefs because he questioned the faiths in truths and actualities also. There is with regard to truths no true synthesis where a combination of thesis and antithesis is combined. The thesis is again that actualities cause logics cause creativities that are applicable at survival of cultures in war and peace. As far as can be seen the effect of Nietzsche's writings was not great on the manufacturers of the world. Perhaps his writings benefited them because much of their system depends on warlike influence to sell their products. The creators of the 1st world who put many new technological advanced products in the world during the 20th century were not let astray by post-modernism's questioning of truth. Manufacturing environments which are directly dependent on actualities cannot question the validity of truthful communications because it will be too illogical to be posited. Accounting however is a field of knowledge which is not as directly related to truths as  manufacturing and therefore it seems the utilisations of actualities has not settled in the same permanence as it had at manufacturing.

 

Section 187, page 110

 

“ Quite apart from the value of such assertions as 'there exists in us a categorical imperative' one can still ask: what does such an assertion say of the man who asserts it? . . . Kant perhaps among them, give to understand with their morality: 'what is worthy of respect in me is that I know how to obey – and things ought to be no different with you!' - in short, moralities too are only a sign-language of emotions.

 

Self

 

Nietzsche's writing intentions benefits US here because he posits with true intentions his opinion. His intention is not to deceive unless he is fishing as earlier stated. He is leading with honest intentions as one of the opinion formers. His opinions PERHAPS, from a non-German perspective should not have been translated and printed however, because they were not actualities. Maybe Germans did not take notice of his opinions ever and the fishing took place only amongst non-Germans who accepted his philosophy. From the current financial states in Europe it seems post-modernist deceit is least applicable in Germany. Although his opinion is not an actuality his opinion, in todays language, is one of the many truths because he posited the opinion with honest intentions, I presume. The word truth is in a transitory phase because of the actual relation it has to actualities. Actually ' truths ' sometimes means actualities and sometimes it means false opinions. The definition of false, the word, has not changed, perhaps, because antithetical values are stronger than actualities, which cannot be proven with 100% certainty. There is no need to use the word truth any more except in philosophies about truths. Even in philosophies about truths it need not be used any more except with reference and clarification with regard to historical statements. Truth, the word, as a concept, is irrelevant currently, and Nietzsche's “ God is dead “ does not apply. Maybe the translators of Revelation of St. John did a good think to change the word and concept truth into a name “ True “ and nullify the adjective, true. Actual, is the new adjective and predicate? ('He tells the actual' does not sound right) that replaces true and real and actual refers in part to the existence of laws, categorical imperatives, statutes and acts; to love; to not break the law; to make subordinate laws: the concept and current noun, now called actuality, and still reflected in honesties is applicable and cannot be erased, without affecting sustain abilities negatively.



 

Section 191, page 113

 

“ The old theological problem of 'faith' and 'knowledge' – or, more clearly, of instinct and reason – that is to say, the question whether in regard to the evaluation of things instinct deserves to have more authority than rationality, which wants to evaluate and act according to reasons, according to 'why?', that is to say according to utility and fitness for a purpose – this is still that old moral problem which first appeared in the person of Socrates and was already dividing the minds of men long before Christianity. . . Socrates himself . . initially taken the side of reason; . . . Plato, more innocent in such things and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wanted at the expenditure of all his strength – the greatest strength any philosopher has hitherto had to expend! - to prove to himself that reason and instinct move of themselves towards one goal, towards the good, towards 'God'; and since Plato . . theologians and philosophers have followed the same path – that is to say, in moral matters instinct, or as the Christian call it 'faith', or as I call it 'the herd', has hitherto triumphed.

 

Self

 

The above supports my thesis. My opinion is that Plato was right, based on the above statement but it seems that he did not motivate himself because Nietzsche says it is dogmatism. According to my thesis it is only possible to speak actualities because of faiths. Faiths give strengths to withstand the opposing forces of actualities for example criminality and corruption which want actualities to be hidden. The opposing forces are relevant even at basic actualities like the actualities which are opposed by white lies and political correctness. It is not certain that Plato equated good with truth because somewhere else I read that Greek philosophy espoused utilitarianism/consequentialism (pursuit of happiness).

 

7 June 2012

 

Section 192, page 115

 

“ To hear something new is hard and painful for the ear; we hear the music of foreigners badly. When we hear a foreign language we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds we hear into words which have a more familiar and homely ring: thus the Germans, for example, once heard arcubalista and adapted it into Armbrust. The novel finds our senses, too, hostile and reluctant; and even in the case of the 'simplest' processes of the senses, the emotions, such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotions of laziness, dominate. - As little as a reader today reads all the individual words (not to speak of the syllables) of a page – he rather takes about five words in twenty haphazardly and 'conjectures' their probable meaning – just as little do we see a tree exactly and entire with regard to its leaves, branches, colour, shape; it is so much easier for us to put together an approximation of a tree. Even when we are involved in the most uncommon experiences we still do the same thing: we fabricate the greater part of the experience and can hardly be compelled not to contemplate some event as its 'inventor'. All this means: we are from the very heart and from the very first – accustomed to lying. Or, to express it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one realizes. 

 

Self

 

Nietzsche's definition here of lying shows that actualities was important to him because the opinion above is a very harsh definition of lying. What I would call an unintentional mistake, Nietzsche calls a lie. It seems thus he was influenced by Zarathustra. Perfection being One only; 100% truth etc. and that everything else is a lie. I do not see a regard for intentions in the statement. Maybe he was an intentional lier because I understand him to mean that – will to power – warrants intentional lies. On the other hand it is not clear if he really thought it to be the best route for himself or whether he meant it as a fish hook for others. It seems more probable that he realized that unintentionally WE do not reflect truth because of a lack of knowledge and method and that he aspired himself to reflect actualities more accurately. Whether he fluctuated in his thought between aspirations for more accurate actualities and will to power via intentional lying is not clear. My feeling though is that for himself he chose aspirations to more accurate reflections of actualities and on the other hand he vindicated people who applies – will to power – through lying as the people in control. He thus kind of acknowledged the power of corruption and vindicated it but he did not want to apply it because he was not criminal. Section 183 and 184 makes it look however that he did use lying in his personal relationships. I classify him now on a truth scale in his age group (in 1886 when he wrote B G E he was 42 years old) between 5% and 95% at about ? % where 5% is the most dishonest person and 95% the most honest person in an age group.

 

Section 198, page 119 – 120

 

Whilst reading this section I thought that Nietzsche realised that truth cannot be reached 100% and therefore he decided, what the heck, why try to reflect actualities, especially if it counts against wills to power. If it is the case that he believed that, he is in compliance of my understanding of post-modernism. Where does the Zarathustra thoughts fit in however? I should study Nietzsche better to understand people today better, because it feels most people act in a post-modernistic Nietzscheian manner today.

 

Section 199, page 120

 

Nietzsche talks about most Europeans being “ herd-animals “ who follows orders unconditionally and he talks about few European commanders with “ moral hypocrisy “ who rules according to “ ancient ” commands. Nietzsche did not agree with people whether they were the ruling or the obeying class. Maybe he was opposing power of rulers and wanted to incite the “ herd-animals ” to become more individualistic. He however praises – will to power – after accepting risk.



 

Section 200, page 122

 

He respected Alcibiades, Caesar, Hohenstaufen Friedrich II and among artists Leonardo da Vinci.

 

Section 201, page 124

 

“ There comes a point of morbid mellowing and over-tenderness in the history of society at which it takes the side even of him who harms it, the criminal, and does so honestly and wholeheartedly. Punishment: that seems to it somehow unfair – certainly the idea of 'being punished' and 'having to punish' is unpleasant to it, makes it afraid. . . the morality of timidity, draws its ultimate conclusion. '

 

Self

 

Nietzsche is a confusing man. The lies he propagated does not enter domains of corruption according to the above. Who was the audience he wanted but never had? The above statement does not reflect the name of the book B G E.

 

Section 203, page 126 – 127

 

Nietzsche was outspoken anti-socialist. Socialism and democracy he saw as a degeneration in a region. Equality meant herd mentality to him.

 

Section 203, page 127

 

“ The circumstances one would have in part to create, in part to employ, to bring them [new philosophers and leaders] into existence; the conjectural paths and tests by virtue of which a soul could grow to such heights and power it would feel compelled to these tasks; a revaluation of values under whose novel pressure and hammer a conscience would be steeled, a heart transformed to brass, so that it might endure the weight of such a responsibility; . . “

 

Self

 

Are “ The circumstances “ bad chaotic conditions, Nietzsche decided to propagate, by using temptations, to fight the socialism he did not appreciate? What was communism's opinion about actualities? It seems more and more that the “truth” Nietzsche opposed was the opinion of socialism which he equated with the democracy of the time; equality in doing/becoming and exaggerated mercy and forgiveness.

 

“ Part Six: We Scholars “

 

Section 204, page 130 – 131

 

“ It is, in particular, the sight of those hotchpotch-philosophers who call themselves 'philosophers of reality' or 'positivists' which is capable of implanting a perilous mistrust in the soul of an ambitious young scholar: these gentleman are at best scholars and specialists themselves, that fact is palpable! - they are one and all defeated men brought back under the sway of science, who at some time or other demanded more of themselves without having the right to this 'more' and the responsibility that goes with it – and who know honourably, wrathfully, revengefully represent by word and deed the unbelief in the lordly task and lordliness of philosophy. “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche said the socialists had little courage for metaphysical belief and philosophy. The positivists too had lack of courage because they were defeated men, who became materialists and who's interests with regard to truths only included facts and actualities about physics. Maybe consequentialists. Perhaps Nietzsche lived in the time when metaphysical chairs were abolished in Europe and he was in essence a metaphysical philosopher. Nietzsche was a philosopher, more in the sense of Plato, a creator, who wanted to approach perfect forms. Arguing this, Nietzsche's writings are beneficial for creativity and design of fast moving consumer goods. The esthetics of fast moving consumer goods; beautiful metaphysical forms should be combined with the positivist view of reality to manufacture products more effectively. They are different types of people who have different tasks in an economy.



 

Section 211, page 142

 

“ Those philosophical labourers after the noble exemplar of Kant and Hegel have to take some great fact of evaluation – that is to say, former assessments of value, creations of value which have become dominant and are for a while called 'truths' – and identify them and reduce them to formulas, whether in the realm of logic or of politics (morals) or of art. It is the duty of these scholars to take everything that has hitherto happened and been valued, and make it clear, distinct, intelligible and manageable, to abbreviate everything long, even 'time' itself, and to subdue the entire past: . . “

 

Self

 

The above supports my opinion that when Nietzsche wrote about “ truths “ he meant accepted opinions and not necessarily actualities in the positivist? sense.

 

12 June 2012

 

“ Part Seven: Our Virtues “

 

Section 216, page 148

 

“ Love of one's enemies? I think that has been well learned: it happens thousandfold today, on a large and small scale; indeed, occasionally something higher and more sublime happens – we learn to despise when we love, and precisely when we love best – but all this unconsciously, without noise, without ostentation, with that modesty and concealment of goodness which forbids the mouth solemn words and the formulas of virtue. “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche also realised that love means to not brake the law and that the dictionary definition of love, as opposite of hate, is not the same as the Bible definition or rather Jesus' definition when he explained what it is to love God and fellow human beings.

 

Section 219, page 149

 

“ Moral judgement and condemnation is the favourite form of revenge of the spiritually limited on those who are less so, likewise a form of compensation for their having been neglected by nature, finally an occasion for acquiring spirit and becoming refined – malice spiritualizes. Deep in their hearts they are glad there exists a standard according to which those overloaded with the goods and privileges of the spirit are their equals – they struggle for the 'equality of all before God' and it is virtually for that purpose that they need the belief in God. It is among them that the most vigorous opponents of atheism are to be found. Anyone who told them 'a lofty spirituality is incompatible with any kind of worthiness and respectability of the merely moral man' would enrage them – I shall take care not to do so. I should, rather, like to flatter them with my proposition that a lofty spirituality itself exists only as the final product of moral qualities; that it is a synthesis of all those states attributed to the 'merely moral' man after they have been acquired one by one through protracted discipline and practice, perhaps in the course of whole chains of generations; that lofty spirituality is the spiritualization of justice and of that benevolent severity which knows itself empowered to maintain order of rank in the world among things themselves – and not only among men (sic, no period) “

 

Self

 

It is not clear what Nietzsche meant. It seems that however, he regarded himself and his type superior, but in what sense is not clear. Spiritually or physically or maybe both, but if it was both then one aspect has to be prioritized above the other in thinking because the two aspects are miles apart in ordinary thoughts. It also depends heavily on opinions about what spiritualities are. That is also not certain to me; I mean what Nietzsche thought spiritualities are. Was it moral attitudes according to him or was it will to power with no regard of moralities?

 

Section 220, page 150

 

“ Now that the 'disinterested' are praised so widely one has, perhaps not without some danger, to become conscious of what it is the people are really interested in, and what in general the things are about which the common man is profoundly and deeply concerned: including the educated, even the scholars and unless all appearances deceives, perhaps the philosophers as well. The fact then emerges that the great majority of those things which interest and stimulate every higher nature and more refined and fastidious taste appear altogether 'uninteresting' to the average man – if he none the less notices a devotion to these things, he calls it 'désintéressé' and wonders how it is possible to act 'disinterestedly'. There have been philosophers who have known how to lend this popular wonderment a seductive and mystical-otherwordly expression ( - perhaps because they did not know the higher nature from experience?) - instead of stating the naked and obvious truth that the 'disinterested' act is a very interesting and interested act, provided that . . . 'And love?' - what! Even an act performed out of love is supposed to be 'un-egoistic'? But you blockheads - ! 'And commendation of him who sacrifices?' - But he who has really made sacrifices knows that he wanted and received something in return – perhaps something of himself in exchange for something of himself – that he gave away here in order to have more there, perhaps in general to be more or to feel himself 'more'. But this is a domain of questions and answers in which a more fastidious taste prefers not to linger: truth has so much to stifle her yawns here when answers are demanded of her. She is after all, a woman: one ought not to violate her. '

 

Self

 

Maybe the answer to the meaning behind calling truth a woman will be found in his book The Gay Science. Calling truth a woman could be a reference to God thoughts after Jesus was called Truth in Revelation 19:11 or it could be a reference to his interest in truths, feeling that truth should have a female character, him being a man. Nick Cave, I think, refers to a returned Jesus as female. Such a division of a concept shows to me something hidden. Why should concepts, in this case truths, be emasculated? Maybe we should then emasculate directness or maybe we should emasculate accuracy or direction. The nonsensical nature of the emasculation of truths shows there is a hidden thought of Nietzsche he does not mention. Maybe he did it because other philosophers did it and he is in agreement with them. Nevertheless it is a phenomenon that can be investigated further.



 

Section 221, page 151

 

Here again Nietzsche clearly states his opposition to equality and socialism.

 

Section 222, page 151

 

“ Where pity and fellow-suffering is preached today – and, heard aright, no other religion is any longer preached now – the psychologist should prick up his ears: through all the  vanity, all the noise characteristic of these preachers (as it is of all preachers) he will hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of self-contempt. It is part of that darkening and uglification of Europe which has now been going on for hundred years (the earliest symptoms of which were first recorded in a thoughtful letter of Galiani's to Madame d'Epinay): if it is not the cause of it! The man of 'modern ideas', that proud ape, is immoderately dissatisfied with himself: that is certain. He suffers: and his vanity would have him only 'suffer with his fellows' . . . .” [Nietzche used three periods, and I used four]

 

Self

 

During Nietzsche's time the ugliness of unrestraint (making competition irrelevant) influenced Europe. Eventually it ended up in wars and communism in the East and capitalism in the West.

 

Section 223, page 152

 

“ Shrovetide laughter and wild spirits, for the transcendental heights of the most absolute nonsense and Aristophanic universal mockery. Perhaps it is precisely here that we are discovering the realm of our invention, that realm where we too can still be original, perhaps as parodists of world history and God's buffoons – perhaps, even if nothing else of today has a future, precisely our laughter may still have a future! “

 

Section 224, page 154

 

“ . . disturbed by the repellant fumes and the proximity of the English rabble in which Shakespeare's art and taste live as we do on the Chiaja of Naples, . . . Like a rider on a charging steed we let fall the reins before the infinite, we modern men, like semi-barbarians – and attain our state of bliss only when we are most –in danger. “

 

Section 225, page 154

 

“ Whether it be hedonism or pessimism or utilitarianism or eudaemonism: all these modes of thought which assess the value of things according to pleasure and pain, that is to say according to attendant and secondary phenomena, are foreground modes of thought and naïveties which anyone conscious of creative powers and an artist's conscience will look down on with derision, though not without pity. Pity for you! That, to be sure, is not pity for social 'distress', for 'society' and its sick and unfortunate, for the vicious and broken from the start who lie all around us; even less is it pity for the  grumbling, oppressed, rebellious slave classes who aspire after domination – they call it 'freedom'. Our pity is a more elevated, more farsighted pity – we see how man is diminishing himself, how you are diminishing him! - and there are times when we behold your pity with an indescribable anxiety, when we defend ourselves against this pity – when we find your seriousness more dangerous than any kind of frivolity . . . The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – do you not know that it is this discipline alone which has created every elevation of mankind hitherto? . . . that which has to suffer and should suffer? “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche ascribes too much to courage and in effect to evil. It sounds as if he says it will be the circumstances in the future for ever. According to Wikipedia a few days ago tens of thousands of American men developed hair cysts around their coccyxes during the second world war. They called it jeep seat. It makes more sense that the hair growths were caused by stress because if bumping on jeep seats caused it why don't horse riders develop it as well. Nietzsche's opinion therefore cannot be accepted here. I also read on the Internet that the cysts are genetic.



 

13 June 2012

 

Section 225, page 154

 

“ In man, creature and creator are united: in man there is matter, fragment, excess, clay, mud, madness, chaos; but in man there is also creator, sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divine spectator and the seventh day – do you understand this antithesis? And that your pity is for the 'creature in man', for that which has to be formed, broken, forged, torn, burned, annealed, refined – that which has to suffer and should suffer? And our pity – do you not grasp whom our opposite pity is for when it defends itself against your pity as the worst of all pampering and weakening? - Pity against pity, then! - But, to repeat, there are higher problems than the problems of pleasure and pain and pity; and every philosophy that treats only of them is a piece of naïvety. - “

 

Self

 

The above I understand as the division between materialism/utilitarianism/consequentialism (socialism) and idealism (Intequism ©2012.6.13). Capitalism cannot resort under intequism because of communalism. I think communalists also take advantage of individuals by not remunerating creativities sufficiently close to sources of creativity. Nietzsche is the idealist and the group he defends himself against, with pity for them, are the socialists. Nietzsche's extreme acceptance of pain as the origin of creativity is not acceptable because he did not realize, according to my knowledge that truths cause creativities and that truths could exist without enduring pain. The sources of creativities are according to me not in pain but in truths.

 

Section 227, page 156

 

“ Honesty – granted that this is our virtue, from which we cannot get free, we free spirits – well, let us labour at it with all love and malice and not weary of 'perfecting' ourselves in our virtue, the only one we have: may its brightness one day overspread this ageing culture and its dull, gloomy seriousness like a gilded azure mocking evening glow! And if our honesty should one day none the less grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and like to have things better, easier, gentler, like an agreeable vice: let us remain hard, we last of the Stoics! And let us send to the aid of our honesty whatever we have of devilry in us – our disgust at the clumsy and casual, our 'nimitur in vetitum', our adventurer's courage, our sharp and fastidious curiosity, our subtlest, most disguised, most spiritual will to power and world-overcoming which wanders avidly through all the realms of the future – let us go to the aid of our 'god' with all our 'devils'! It is probable that we shall be misunderstood and taken for what we are not: but what of that! People will say: 'Their “honesty” - is their devilry and nothing more!' But what of that! And even if they were right! Have all gods hitherto not been such devils grown holy and been rebaptized? And what do we know ourselves, when all's said and done? And what the spirit which leads us on would like to be called (it is a question of names)? And how many spirits we harbour? Our honesty, we free spirits – let us see to it that our honesty does not become our vanity, our pomp and finery, our limitation, our stupidity! Every virtue tends towards stupidity, every stupidity towards virtue; 'stupid to the point of saintliness' they say in Russia – let us see to it that through honesty we do not finally become saints and bores! Is life not a hundred times too short to be – bored in it? One would have to believe in eternal life too . . . . “

 

 nimitur in vetitum “ - [Google translation: “ too much in the forbidden “]

 

Section 232, page 164

 

“ But she does not want truth: what is the truth to a woman! From the very first nothing has been more alien, repugnant, inimical to woman than truth –her great art is the lie, her supreme concern is appearance and beauty. Let us confess it, we men: it is precisely this art and this instinct in woman which we love and honour: we who have a hard time and for our refreshment like to associate with creatures under whose hands, glances and tender follies our seriousness, our gravity and profundity appear to us almost as folly. “

 

Section 235, page 165

 

“ There are fortunate turns of the spirit, there are epigrams, a little handful of words, in which an entire culture, a whole society is suddenly crystallized. Among these is Madame de Lambert's remark to her son: 'mon ami, ne vous permettez jamais que de folies, qui vous feront grand plaisir'  [Google: My friend, do not let that nonsense, you will delight] – the most motherly and prudent remark, incidentally, that was ever addressed to a son. “

 

Section 236, page 165

 

“ That which Dante and Goethe believed of woman – the former when he sang 'elle guardava suso, ed io in lei', the latter when he translated it 'the eternal-womanly draws us upward' -: I do not belief, for that is precisely what she believes of the eternal manly . . . . “

 

Self

 

Magnetisms draws men and women upward. I believe there are honest men and women whom I call WE.



 

Section 238, page 166 – 167

 

A man without pity, with cruelty will treat women as objects according to Nietzsche. It seems this is the type of man Nietzsche wants to be. He compares such treatment of women with oriental manners. My experience of China was the opposite. The men and women shared duties in their houses and at work. Men had the most domineering positions in business but women were not treated as objects. Probably it differs from household to household. My experience was with middle class traditional Chinese people who worked in a factory close to Beijing. The women seemed to me very strong.

 

“ Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands “

 

Section 243, page 173

 

“ I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly in the direction of the constellation of Hercules: and I hope that men on the earth will in this matter emulate the sun. And we at their head, we good Europeans! - “

 

Section 250, page 181

 

“ What Europe owes the Jews? - Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing that is at once of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the dreadfulness and majesty of infinite demands, infinite significances, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionabilities – and consequently precisely the most attractive, insidious and choicest part of those iridescences and seductions to life with whose afterglow the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, is now aflame – and perhaps burning itself up. We artists among the spectators and philosophers are – grateful to the Jews for this. “

 

Section 251, page 182 - 183

 

“ 'Let in no more Jews! And close especially the doors to the East (also to Austria)!' - thus commands the instinct of a people whose type is still weak and undetermined, so that it could easily be effected, easily extinguished by a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest and purest race at present living in Europe; they know how to prevail even under the worst conditions (better even than under favourable ones), by means of virtues which one would like to stamp as vices – thanks above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before 'modern ideas'; they change, when they change, only in the way in which the Russian Empire makes its conquests – an empire that has time and is not of yesterday -: namely, according to the principle 'as slowly as possible'! A thinker who has the future of Europe on his conscience will, in all the designs he makes for this future, take the Jews into account as he will take the Russians, as the immediate surest and most probable factors in the great game and struggle of forces. . . That the Jews could, if they wanted – or if they were compelled, as the anti-Semites seem to want - even now predominate, indeed quite literally rule over Europe, is certain; that they are not planning and working towards that is equally certain. In the meantime they are, rather, wanting and wishing, even with some importunity, to be absorbed and assimilated by and into Europe, they are longing to be finally settled, permitted, respected somewhere and to put an end to the nomadic life, to the 'Wandering Jew' -; one ought to pay heed to this inclination and impulse (which is perhaps even a sign that the Jewish instincts are becoming milder) and go out to meet it: for which it would perhaps be a good idea to eject the anti-Semitic ranters from the country. Go out to meet it with all caution, with selectivity; much as the English nobility do. It is plain that the stronger and already more firmly formed types of the new Germanism could enter into relations with them with the least hesitation; the aristocratic officer of the March, for example: it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius of money and patience (and above all a little mind and spirituality, of which there is a plentiful lack in the persons above mentioned -) could not be added and bred into the hereditary art of commanding and obeying, in both of which the above-mentioned land is today classic. But here it is fitting that I should break off my cheerful Germanomaniac address: for already I am touching on what is to me serious, on the 'European problem' as I understand it, on the breeding of a new ruling caste for Europe. - “



 

14 June 2012

 

“ Part Nine: What is Noble? “

 

Section 257, page 192

 

“ As to how an aristocratic society (that is to say, the precondition for this elevation of the type 'man') originates, one ought not to yield to any humanitarian illusions: truth is hard. Let us admit to ourselves unflinchingly how every higher culture on earth has hitherto begun! Men of a still natural nature, barbarians in every fearful sense of the word, men of prey still in possession of an unbroken strength of will and lust for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more civilized, more peaceful, perhaps trading or cattle-raising races, or upon old mellow cultures, the last vital forces in which were even then flickering out in a glittering firework display of spirit and corruption. The noble caste was in the beginning always the barbarian caste: their superiority lay, not in their physical strength, but primarily in their physical – they were more complete human beings (which, on every level, also means as much as 'more complete beasts' -). “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche pay here only attention to the groups. Individuals with regard to culture changes he did not consider in the above statement, for example Jesus (who was also part of a group), Mohammed, Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Seneca, Ghandi, Kant, himself, Popper, Jaspers and Spinoza. They were individuals who played roles in the same eras as the groups of “ corruptors “. Somewhere I read for example that warlike people used Mohammed's Koran to justify their wars in which a new aristocracy was settled in Arabia. Where Nietzsche explains that corruptors played an important role I will rather think the word corruption may be replaced by war. Wars are not corruptions. There are corruptions within wars which the Geneva Convention tries to prohibit. Wars are legal actions, probably with deaths as the result if not successful, because treasons as far as I know carry death sentences.

 

Section 259, page 193 - 194

 

“ To refrain from mutual injury, mutual violence, mutual exploitation, to equate one's own will with that of another: this may in a certain rough sense become good manners between individuals if the conditions for it are present (namely if their strength and value standards are in fact similar and they both belong to one body). As soon as there is a desire to take this principle further, however, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it at once reveals itself for what it is: as the will to the denial of life, as the principle of dissolution and decay. One has to think this matter thoroughly through to the bottom and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of the strange and weaker, suppression, severity, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and, at the least and mildest, exploitation – but why should one always have to employ precisely those words which have been from of old been stamped with a slanderous intention? Even that body within which, as was previously assumed, individuals treat one another as equals – this happens in every healthy aristocracy – must, if it is a living and not a decaying body, itself do all that to other bodies which the individuals within it refrain from doing to one another: it will have to be the will to power incarnate, it will want to grow, expand, draw to itself, gain ascendancy – not out of any morality or immorality, but because it lives,  and because life is will to power. On the point, however, is the common European consciousness more reluctant to learn than it is here; everywhere one enthuses, even under scientific disguises, about coming states of society in which there will be 'no more exploitation' – that sounds to my ears like promising a life in which there will be no organic functions. 'Exploitation' does not pertain to a corrupt or imperfect or primitive society: it pertains to the essence of the living thing as a fundamental organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will of life. - Granted this is a novelty as a theory – as a reality it is the primordial fact of all history: let us be at least that honest with ourselves! - “

 

Self

 

I think Nietzsche makes a mistake by isolating the above 'fact' and not seeing the fact as a part of something else. He, by doing that does not count himself in. He was an individual and his philosophy influenced many. If he perceived himself to be a god or The God like it sounded at section 227 page 156 maybe he did not perceive himself to be part of the samelewing because many perceive God to be separate. He does however use the word we, which means he did see himself as part of a group.



 

Section 260, page 195

 

“ . . it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are liars. 'We who are truthful' – thus did the nobility of ancient Greece designate themselves. It is immediately obvious that designations of moral value were everywhere first applied to human beings, and only later and derivatively to actions: which is why it is a grave error when moral historians start from such questions as 'why has the compassionate action been praised?' The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of, he judges 'what harms me is harmful in itself', he knows himself to be that which in general first accords honour to things, he creates values. “

 

Self

 

The above statement was written with regard to honesties because people who can be honest live within the context of a samelewing. They do not have to hide their doings away from the samelewing. Nietzsche therefore makes a mistake when he writes “ . . first applied to human beings . . “ It was applied to truthfulnesses, to honesties which are concepts not human beings. The aristocrats of Greece thus formed as a result of concepts (forms and ideals) which they applied. Whether the concepts, truths were parts of their genes as philogenetic attributes may be possible and not sure. Logically speaking though, if truthfulnesses are parts of genetic behaviours, the concepts probably became part of genes. We assume there was only one or were two humans in the beginning. The concepts truths then became part of the two and the concepts untruths became part of both. The concept endlessness of realities, which motivates more truths, became part of my genes. Endlessness of realities was a thought that I realised and then it started to influence me. The thought was a result of my pre-knowledge at that stage; a result; a logical conclusion and then I read that Karl Jaspers and other philosophers explain endlessnesses of realities. The fact that I realised it before I read about it in Samay's (I think) and Kane's (I think) theses could mean that logically I realised it or that some unknown reading influenced me. The realisation was definitely in connection with dictionary definitions of words therefore my writing about definitions for words of definitions for words ad infinitum. The question is whether the realisation was part of my genes or whether it was a natural progression of logics after pre-knowledges. It is probably a logical progression of logics because I doubt that philosophers who realised it as well are genetically connected with me. It relates thus to pre-knowledges, being reborn and courage from faith, more, than to genetics. The genetic connections between me and philosophers who also identified the endlessness of realities are insignificant even if we are all descendants from two or One because the thesis truths and antithesis, untruths, or the thesis untruths and the antithesis truths exist in each and every person because of the concept of endlessnesses of realities. We cannot know whether the first word spoken had a truthful or untruthful intention. Endlessnesses of realities, the concepts, were logical next steps in my thoughts and philosophers'. I do not regard myself a philosopher because I do not have a formal philosophical degree. My philosophical knowledges have not been qualified.

 

Section 262, page 199-201

 

“ A species arises, a type becomes fixed and strong, through protracted struggle against essentially constant unfavourable conditions. Conversely, one knows from the experience of breeders that species which receive plentiful nourishment and an excess of care and protection soon tend very strongly to produce variations of their type and are rich in marvels and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices). Now look for once at an aristocratic community, Venice, say, or an ancient Greek polis, as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of breeding: there there (sic) are human beings living together and thrown on their own resources who want their species to prevail usually because they have to prevail or run the terrible risk of being exterminated. Here those favourable conditions, that excess, that protection which favours variations, is lacking; the species needs itself as species, as something that can prevail and purchase durability in its continual struggle against its neighbours or against the oppressed in revolt or threatening revolt, precisely by virtue of its hardness, uniformity, simplicity of form. The most manifold experience teaches it which qualities it has principally to thank that, in spite of all gods and men, it still exists and has always been victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, these virtues alone does it breed and cultivate. It does so with severity, indeed it wants severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant, in the education of the young, in the measure it takes with respect to women, in marriage customs, in the relations between young and old, in the penal laws (which are directed only at variants) – it counts intolerance itself among the virtues under the name 'justice'. A type with few but very marked traits, a species of stern, warlike, prudently silent, determined and taciturn men (and, as such, men of the finest feeling for the charm and nuances of society), is in this way firmly fixed beyond the changes of generations; continual struggle against ever-constant unfavourable conditions is, as aforesaid, that which fixes and hardens a type. In the end, however, there arises one day an easier state of affairs and the tremendous tension relaxes; perhaps there are no longer any enemies among their neighbours, and the means of life, even for the enjoyment of life, are there in plenty. With one stroke the bond and constraint of the ancient discipline is broken: it is no longer felt to be a necessity, a condition of existence – if it were to persist it could be only as a form of luxury, as an archaizing taste. Variation, whether as deviation (into the higher, rarer, more refined) or as degeneration and monstrosity, is suddenly on the scene in the greatest splendour and abundance, the individual dares to be individual and stand out. . . Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger, only this time it comes from the individual, from neighbour and friend, from the street, from one's own child, from one's own heart, from the most personal and secret recesses of wish and will: what will the moral philosophers who come up in this age now have to preach? They discover, these acute observers and idlers, that the end is fast approaching, that everything around them is corrupt and corrupting, that nothing can last beyond the day after tomorrow, one species of man excepted, the incurable mediocre. The mediocre alone have the prospect of continuing on and propagating themselves – they are the men of the future, the sole survivors; 'be like them! Become mediocre!' is henceforth the only morality that has any meaning left, that still finds ears to hear it. - But it is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! - for it can never admit what it is and what it wants! It has to speak of moderation and dignity and duty and love of one's neighbour – it will scarcely be able to conceal its irony! - “

 

Self

 

I think Nietzsche was a rhetorician because he ascribes danger to, “ . . it comes from the individual . . “, he was there perhaps talking about himself; how could he have been a danger, one man? Maybe he thought he had metaphysical dangerous powers, thoughts, WE struggle with and have to overcome if we want to stay honest. Even if Nietzsche's writings or 'fish hooks' had a negative effect on post-modern morals the affects are mainly current conditions. His writings found times and places to flourish because of the conditions that are right for flourishing. That time only became relevant after his death, now, because his books were not well published during his lifetime.



 

15 June 2012

 

Section 264, page 203

 

“ That which his ancestors most liked to do and most constantly did cannot be erased from a man's soul . . This constitutes the problem of race. “

 

Self

 

Nietzsche according to this statement did not think that being reborn is possible.

 

Section 265, page 204

 

“ At the risk of annoying innocent ears I set it down that egoism pertains to the essence of the noble soul, I mean the immovable faith that to a being such as 'we are' other beings have to be subordinate by their nature, and sacrifice themselves to us. “

 

Self

 

The quotation of “ 'we are' “ makes it look as if Nietzsche perhaps did not identify with that trait of nobility in Europe. He equated at section 260, truth with nobility and at section 227 he affirmed his honest intentions.

 

Section 266, page 205

 

“ 'One can truly respect only him who does not look out for himself.' - Goethe to Rat Schlosser. “

 

Section 267, page 205

 

“ The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: siao-sin: 'Make your heart small!' This is the characteristic basic tendency in late civilizations: I do not doubt that the first thing an ancient Greek would remark in us Europeans of today would also be self-diminution – through that alone we should be 'contrary to his taste'. - “

 

Section 271, page 210

 

“The highest instinct of cleanliness places him who affected with it in the strangest and most perilous isolation, as a saint: for precisely this is saintliness – the highest spiritualization of the said instinct. . . The saint's pity is pity for the dirt of the human, all too human. “

 

Section 293, page 218

 

The unmanliness of that which is in such fanatic circles baptized 'pity' is, I think, the first thing which leaps to the eye. - This latest species of bad taste must be resolutely and radically excommunicated; and I would like to see the good amulet 'gai saber' worn around neck and hearts so as to ward it off – 'gay science', to make the matter plain. “

 

Section 295, page 218 - 220

 

“ 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, who says no word and gives no glance in which there lies no touch of enticement, to whose mastery belongs knowing how to seem – not what he is but what to those who follow him is one constraint more to press ever closer to him, to follow him ever more inwardly and thoroughly – the genius of the heart who makes everything loud and self-satisfied fall silent and teaches it to listen, who smooths rough souls and gives them a new desire to savour – the desire to lie still as a mirror, that the deep sky may mirror itself in them -; the genius of the heart who teaches the stupid and hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more delicately; who divines the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick and opaque ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold which has lain long in the prison of much mud and sand; the genius of the heart from whose touch everyone goes away richer, not favoured and surprised, not as if blessed and oppressed with the goods of others, but richer in himself, newer to himself than before, broken open, blown upon and sounded out by a thawing wind, more uncertain perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes that as yet have no names, full of new will and current, full of new ill will and counter current . . . [three periods by Nietzsche] but what am I  doing my friends? Of whom am I speaking to you? Have I so far forgot myself that I have not even told you his name? Unless you have already yourselves divined who this questionable god and spirit is who wants to be praised in such a fashion. For as happens to everyone who has always been on the move and in foreign lands from his childhood up, so many a strange and not undangerous (sic) spirit has crossed my path too, but above all he of whom I was just speaking, and he again and again, no less a personage in fact than the god Dionysus, that great ambiguous and tempter god to whom, as you know, once I brought in all secrecy and reverence my first-born – being, as it seems to me, the last to have brought him a sacrifice: for I have found no one who could have understood what I was then doing. Meanwhile, I have learned much, all too much more about the philosophy of this god and, as I have said, from mouth to mouth – I, the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last begin to give you, my friends, a little taste of this philosophy, in so far as I am permitted to? In a hushed voice, as is only proper: for it involves much that is secret, new, unfamiliar, strange, uncanny. The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher , and that gods too therefore philosophize, seems a by no means harmless novelty and one calculated to excite suspicion precisely among philosophers – among you, my friends, it will meet with friendlier reception, unless it comes too late and not at the right time: for, as I have discovered, you no longer like to believe in God and gods now. “



 

“ COMMENTARY “

 

“ 7. . . .  Dionysus: tyrant of Syracuse at whose court Plato spent some years. “

 

“ 11. . . .  by means of a faculty: Vermöge eines Vermögens – the tautology is more evident in the original. “

 

New Oxford American Dictionary – Apple coyright

tautology |tôˈtäləjē|

noun ( pl. -gies)

the saying of the same thing twice in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style (e.g., they arrived one after the other in succession).

a phrase or expression in which the same thing is said twice in different words.

Logic a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form.

 

“ 199. . . . res publica: commonwealth “

 

“ 210. Chinaman of Königsberg: Kant. “