| Nietzsche became much misused by rightwing movements. He was an extremely lonely man. He quite rightly believed that none of his contemporaries understood him intellectually. He realized perfectly well that his works would be misunderstood, and his writings are full with bitter remarks about his blissfully unaware fellow men. Nietzsches thoughts related to democracy though are far from conservative. |
Nevertheless...the awakening of moral observation has become necessary, …mankind... has, with paltry evasions, always avoided investigation of the origin and history of the moral sensations.
….it has been demonstrated in many instances how the errors of the greatest philosophers usually have their point of departure in a false explanation of certain human actions and sensations; ...a false ethics is erected, religion and mythological monsters …
from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.37, R.J. Hollingdale transl
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Morality makes stupid.
-- Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality) applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity, the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs: that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and better customs: it makes stupid.from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s.19, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has always first been accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen, the law could not afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate gradually changed; - history treats almost exclusively of these bad men who subsequently became good men!
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s.20, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Suspicious. To admit a belief merely because it is a custom - but that means to be dishonest, cowardly, lazy! - And so could dishonesty, cowardice and laziness be the preconditions for morality?
from Nietzsche's Daybreak,s.101, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
... hitherto we have been permitted to seek beauty only in the morally good - a fact which sufficiently accounts for our having found so little of it and having had to seek about for imaginary beauties without backbone! - As surely as the wicked enjoy a hundred kinds of happiness of which the virtuous have no inkling, so too they possess a hundred kinds of beauty; and many of them have not yet been discovered.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s.468, R.J. Hollingdale transl
What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good. The good men are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them to bear fruit - the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all land is depleted, and the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.4, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Where the good begins. Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.53, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Suppose nothing else were "given" as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other "reality" besides the reality of our drives--for thinking is merely a relation of these drives to each other: is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether this "given" would not be sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or "material") world?...
Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one basic form of the will--namely, of the will to power, as my proposition has it... then one would have gained the right to determine all efficient force univocally as--will to power. The world viewed from inside... it would be "will to power" and nothing else.
from Beyond Good and Evil, s.36, Walter Kaufmann transl.
[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.
from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, s.259, Walter Kaufmann transl.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
from Nietzsche's Nachlass, A. Danto translation.
Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things.
from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.16, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Enemies of truth.-- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.483, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.-- Every word is a prejudice.
from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and his Shadow,s. 55, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
Man and things.-- Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.
from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s.483, R.J. Hollingdale transl
Mystical explanations.-- Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.126, Walter Kaufmann transl.
What are man's truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.265, Walter Kaufmann transl.
We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody could now endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.121, Walter Kaufmann transl.
Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith... include the following: that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself.
from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.110, Walter Kaufmann transl..
