Nietzsche on People

Originally posted 21 July 2005.

I don't even know which book this is from. Haven't looked at it in about 20 years. If I had to guess, probably The Joyous Wisdom aka the popularly known but clunky 'Gay Science'. It's right up there with Human, All Too Human. Both from the 'middle period' (1881 -1886).

After Beyond Good and Evil and Geneology of Morals you get more of the fire and brimstone stuff which is fun enough. But really it mostly just amounts to sad as he suspected he was dying and wouldn't have time to finish The Will to Power. Near as I can tell that book is kind of a dog's breakfast anyways.

He actually really cared about people, which next to no one gets. All he did was write self-help books, in easily digestible form. Not a systematizer at all, he didn't even write philosophy per se, far more just insights into people, an early stab at psychology, shit like 'how do I live my life without God'.

You know, what philosophy is supposed to be. Simply put: understandible ruminations on the world. Not the utter fucking shit of culture-studies-post-modernism or whatever they're calling abstruse elitist jargon-ridden reactionary-leftist falderol nowadays. Philosophy only works in healthy cultures, the sick it makes even sicker was his observation in 'Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks'.

Nietzsche was rightly terrified of the triumph of nihilism, which came true about a hundred years ago in Germany and may yet come true here, although the tide appears to have turned on the forces of nihilism, decadence and ressentiment. He truly died for his beliefs, prematurely. He ended up the martyr to certain ideals, which he always belittled.

Is the Turin horse story true? Look it up. It wouldn't surprise me. So it goes.

484
Upside down world. - We criticize a thinker more sharply when he presents us with a displeasing proposition; and yet it would be more reasonable to do this when his proposition pleases us.

489
Not too deep. - Those persons who grasp a thing in all its depth rarely remain true to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light: where there is always much that is terrible to see.

490
Delusions of idealists. - All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are essentially better than everything else in the world and do not want to believe that if their cause is to flourish, it will require exactly the same foul-smelling manure as is necessary for every other human undertaking.

491
Self-observation. - Human beings are quite well defended against themselves, against any surveillance and besiegement by themselves; they are not ordinarily able to perceive anything more than their outer defenses. The real stronghold is inaccessible to them, even invisible, unless their friends and enemies turn traitor and lead them in by a secret path.

493
Nobility of character. - Nobility of character consists in large part of good-naturedness and a lack of mistrust, and thus contains precisely what greedy and successful people like to treat with superiority and scorn.

495
What rouses indignation in an individual lifestyle. - People are always irritated with anyone who adopts extremely individual guidelines for his life; they feel themselves degraded to the status of common beings by the exceptional treatment that person confers upon himself.

497
Condition for heroism. - If someone wants to become a hero, then the snake must already have become a dragon; otherwise he lacks a suitable foe.

500
Making use of ebb and flow. - We must know how to use for the purpose of knowledge the inner current that draws us toward a thing and then, in turn, the one that after a time draws us away from that thing.

501
Joy in oneself. - 'Taking joy in a thing' is what we say: but in truth we are taking joy in ourselves by means of the thing.

502
The modest one. - Anyone who is modest toward people displays his arrogance towards things (city, state, society, the age, humanity) all the more strongly. That is his revenge.

503
Envy and jealousy. - Envy and jealousy are the shameful private parts of the human soul. The comparison can perhaps be extended.

504
The most refined hypocrite. - Not to speak of oneself at all is a very refined form of hypocrisy.

506
Advocate of truth. - Truth is least likely to find advocates not when it is dangerous to speak the truth, but when it is boring to do so.

511
Those true to their convictions. - Anyone who has a lot to do maintains his general views and opinions almost unchanged. likewise everyone who works in the service of an idea: he will never again examine the idea itself, he has not time anymore for that; indeed, it goes against his interests to consider discussing it at all.

513
Life as the yield of life. - However far human beings may reach with their knowledge, however objective they may seem themselves to be: in the end, they still carry away nothing but their own biography.

515
From experience. - The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition for it.

516
Truth. - Nobody dies nowadays from fatal truths: there are too many antidotes.

523
Wanting to be loved. - The demand to be loved is the greatest of all presumptions.

527
Holding firmly to an opinion. - Someone holds firmly to an opinion because he flatters himself that he came upon it himself, someone else because he learned it with difficulty and is proud of having grasped it: both, therefore, out of vanity.

531
The life of an enemy. - Anyone who lives for the sake of battling an enemy has an interest in keeping that enemy alive.

536
Value of tasteless opponents. - We sometimes remain true to a cause only because its opponents are unceasingly tasteless.

541
In the current. - Strong waters carry much stone and underbrush along with them, strong spirits many stupid and muddled heads.

545
Self-gratification in vanity. - A vain person wants not only to be prominent, but also to feel prominent, for which reason he disdains no means for deceiving and defrauding himself. He takes to heart not the opinion of others, but his opinion of their opinion.

547
The 'rich in spirit.' - Someone who seeks spirit has no spirit.

548
Hint for party leaders. - If we can impel people to declare themselves for something publicly, we have usually also brought them to declare themselves for it inwardly; from then on, they want to be found consistent.

552
The only human right. - Anyone who deviates from tradition becomes a victim of the extraordinary; anyone who remains within tradition is its slave. In either case, he will be destroyed.

555
Dangerous helpfulness. - There are people who want to make other people's lives harder for no other reason than to offer them afterward their recipes for making life easier, for example, their Christianity.

556
Industriousness and conscientiousness. - Industriousness and conscientiousness are often antagonists because industriousness wants to take fruit from the tree while it is still sour, while conscientiousness lets it hang too long, until it falls off and is smashed.

558
Lacking the right circumstances. - Many people wait their entire lives for the opportunity to be good in their way.

561
A model for others. - Anyone who wants to give a good example must mix a grain of folly into his virtue: then others will imitate him and at the same time raise themselves above the person they are imitating - which people love to do.

567
Enmity turned to advantage. - People who cannot make their merit fully clear to the world try to arouse a strong enmity against themselves. They then have the comfort of thinking that this stands between their merits and an acknowledgment of them - and that many others suppose the same thing: which is very advantageous for their sense of worth.

568
Confession. - We forget our guilt when we have confessed it to another, but generally the other person does not forget it.

572
Origin of courage. - An ordinary person is as courageous and invulnerable as a hero if he does not see the danger, if he has no eye for it. Conversely: the hero has his one vulnerable spot on his back, in the place, that is, where he has no eyes.

574
Miraculous vanity. - Anyone who boldly prophesies the weather three times and does so successfully believes a little bit, deep down in his soul, in his prophetic gift. We give credit to miraculous and irrational things when it flatters our self-esteem.

582
Martyr. - The disciple of a martyr suffers more than the martyr.

585
Ill-humored thought. - People are like the charcoal kilns in the woods. Only when young people have stopped glowing and been carbonized do they, like the latter, become useful. As long as they are smoldering and smoking, they may be more interesting, but they are useless and all too often disagreeable. - Humanity makes pitiless use of every individual as material for heating its great machines: but what are the machines for, if all the individuals (that is, humanity) serve only to keep them going? Machines that are their own purpose - is that the umana commedia?

586
Of the hour hand of life. - Life consists of rare individual moments of the highest significance and countless intervals of time in which at best the shadowy images of those moments hover around us. Love, spring, every beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea - only once do all those things speak fully to the heart: if in fact they ever do find their way completely into words. For many people do not have any such moments and are themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of real life.

588
Modesty. - There is a true modesty (that is, the recognition that we are not our own work); and it is quite becoming for someone of great spirit, because he precisely the one who can grasp the idea of complete irresponsibility (even for the good that he produces). People do not hate the immodesty of a great person insofar as he is feeling his strength, but because he wants to experience his strength first by hurting others, treating them in a domineering way, and seeing how much of this they can endure. This usually shows that he actually lacks a feeling of certainty about his own strength and consequently he makes people doubt his greatness. To this extent, immodesty is very inadvisable from the point of view of shrewdness.

591
Vegetation of happiness. - Right beside the sorrow of the world and often upon its volcanic ground, human beings have laid out their little gardens of happiness; whether they observe life with the eye of someone who wants knowledge alone from existence, or of someone who submits and resigns himself, or of someone who rejoices in difficulties that have been overcome - everywhere they will find some happiness sprouting beside the misfortune - and indeed, the more happiness, the more volcanic the ground was - only it would be ridiculous to say that the suffering itself could be justified by this happiness.

599
Age of arrogance. - Between the twenty-sixth and the thirtieth years lies the real period of arrogance for talented people; it is the time of their first ripeness, with a strong residue of sourness. Based upon what they feel within themselves, they demand respect and humility from other people who see little or nothing of what they themselves see, and because these are not immediately forthcoming, they avenge themselves by that arrogant glance or gesture, by that tone of voice that a subtle ear and eye recognize in all the products of that age, whether they be poems, philosophies, or paintings and music. Older, more experienced people smile at this and recall with emotion this beautiful age at which we are angry at the fate of being so much and seeming so little. Later, we really do seem to be more - but we have lost the fine belief that we are very much: unless we remain the incorrigible fools of vanity for the rest of our lives.

600
Deceptive and yet solid. - As we may, in order to pass by an abyss or to cross a plank over a deep stream, require a railing - not so much to hold on to, for it would immediately collapse if we were to do that, but to give our eye an image of security - so in our youth we require people who unknowingly serve like that railing; it is true that they would not help us if we really were in great danger and wanted to support ourselves upon them, but they provide a comforting sensation of nearby protection.

601
Learning to love. - We must learn to love, learn to be kind, from our youth on up; if education and chance provide us with no opportunity for practicing these feelings, then our soul will dry out and become incapable of even understanding those tender inventions of loving people. Hatred must likewise be learned and nourished, if someone wants to become a skillful hater: otherwise the germ of that, too, will gradually die out.

603
Love and respect. - Love desires, fear avoids. That is the reason why someone cannot be both loved and respected by the same person, at least not at the same time. For someone who respects another acknowledges his power, that is to say, he fears it: his state is one of awe. Love, however, acknowledges no power, nothing that divides, contrasts, elevates and subordinates. Because it provides no respect, people whose ambition is to be respected are secretly or openly averse to being loved.

606
Desire for intense pain. - When it has passed, passion leaves behind an obscure longing for it and, even as it vanishes, throws us one more seductive glance. It must in fact have provided a sort of pleasure to be scourged with its whip. More moderate sensations seem flat by contrast; we always, it seems, prefer more intense displeasure to feeble pleasure.

608
Cause and effect confused. - We unconsciously look for the principles and dogmas that fit our temperament, so that it finally appears as if the principles and dogmas have created our character, have given it stability and reliability: whereas precisely the reverse has taken place. Our thinking and judgement are, it seems, to be made the cause of our nature after the fact: but actually it is our nature that causes us to think and judge in this way or that. - And what destines us to play this almost unconscious farce? Indolence and convenience, and not least the desire for vanity to be seen as consistent through and through, the same in nature as in thought: for this procures respect, imparts confidence and power.

609
Age and truth. - Young people love what is interesting and peculiar, regardless of how true or false it is. More mature spirits love truth for what is interesting and peculiar in it. Fully mature minds, finally, love truth even where it seems plain and simple and is boring to ordinary people because they have noticed that truth tends to speak of its highest spiritual possession with an air of simplicity.

614
Backward and anticipatory people. - The disagreeable character of someone who is full of mistrust, feels envy at every success of competitors and neighbors, and becomes violent and enraged toward divergent opinions shows that he belongs to an earlier stage of culture and is therefore a relic: for the way in which he interacts with people was proper and suitable for the circumstances of an age when might made right; he is a backward human being. A different character, one that has a rich capacity to share in the joys of others, wins friends everywhere, feels affection for all that is growing and becoming, shares the pleasure of others in all their honors and successes, and claims no privilege of being alone in recognizing truth, but is instead filled with a modest mistrust - that is an anticipatory person who is striving toward a higher human culture. The disagreeable character stems from the time when the rough foundations of human intercourse still had to be constructed, the other one lives on its highest floors, as far as possible from the wild animal that, locked up in the cellars beneath the foundations of culture, rages and howls.

616
Estranged from the present. - There are great advantages if at some point we estrange ourselves to a great extent from our age and are, as it were, driven from its shore back into the ocean of archaic worldviews. Gazing from there toward the coast, we survey its entire shape for the first time and have the advantage, when we approach it once again, of understanding it better as a whole than do those who have never left it.

617
Sowing and reaping from personal failings. - People like Rousseau understand how to use their weaknesses, deficiencies, and vices as manure for their talent, as it were. When he deplores the depravity and degeneration of society as a distressing consequence of culture, this is based upon personal experience, the bitterness of which gives sharpness to his general condemnation and poisons the arrows with which he shoots; he unburdens himself first as an individual and intends to look for a cure that will directly benefit society, but indirectly and by means of that benefit himself as well.

621
Love as a trick. - Anyone who really wants to get to know something new (be it a person, an event, a book) does well to take up this new thing with all possible love, to quickly avert his eye from and even to forget everything in it that appears hostile, offensive or false to him: so that, for example, we gave the author of a book the greatest possible head start and, as at a race, actually yearn with a pounding heart for him to reach his goal. By proceeding in this way, we press into the heart of the new thing, to the point that gives it motion: and this is precisely what getting to know it means. If we have gotten this far, the understanding can set its restrictions afterward; that overestimation, that temporary staying of the critical pendulum, was simply a trick for enticing the soul of the thing to come forth.

624
Involvement with the higher self. - Everyone has good days when he finds his higher self; and true humanity demands that we judge someone only according to this state, and not according to his workday condition of constraint and servitude. We should, for instance, appraise and honor a painter according to the highest vision that he was able to see and to represent. But people themselves get quite differently involved with this higher self of theirs and frequently play their own parts, insofar as they later imitate over and over the self of their best moments. Many people live shyly and humbly in the presence of their ideal and would like to deny it: they are afraid of their higher self because when it speaks, its words are demanding. Moreover, it has a supernatural freedom of coming and staying away as it pleases; it is therefore frequently called a gift from the gods (of chance): this, however, is the person himself.

626
Without melody. - There are people for whom a steady inner repose and a harmonious ordering of all their capacities are so characteristic that all goal-oriented activity is repugnant to them. They resemble music that consists of nothing but long, drawn-out harmonic chords, without ever showing even the start of an articulated, active melody. All movement from without serves only to establish their boat at once in a new state of equilibrium on the lake of euphonic harmony. Modern people generally become extremely impatient when they encounter such natures, who become nothing, without our being able to say that they are nothing. But in certain moods, the sight of them arouses that uncommon question: why melody at all? Why isn't it sufficient for us when life mirrors itself peacefully upon a deep lake? - The Middle Ages were richer in such natures than our age is. How rarely do we still encounter someone who is able to live so very peacefully and cheerfully with himself, even amid the crowd, saying to himself as Goethe did: 'The best thing of all is the profound stillness toward the world in which I live and grow, and where I gain what they cannot take from me with fire and sword.'

629
Of conviction and justice. - To demand that someone later, in coldness and sobriety, stand behind what he said, promised, resolved in passion - this is among the heaviest burdens that oppress humanity. Having to acknowledge for all future time the consequences of wrath, of inflamed vengefulness, of enthusiastic devotion - that can stimulate a bitterness towards these feelings that is all the greater when precisely these things are everywhere made the objects of idolatry, especially by artists. They foster an esteem for the passions and have always done so; admittedly, they also glorify the terrible atonement for passion that someone takes upon himself, those vengeful outbursts that have death, mutilation, voluntary banishment as consequences, and the resignation of a shattered heart. In any case, they keep curiosity about the passions awake; it is as if they wanted to say: without passions you have experienced nothing at all. - Because we have sworn to be faithful, though perhaps to a purely fictitious being such as a god, because we have given our heart to a prince, a party, a woman, a priestly order, an artist, or a thinker, in a state of blind madness that enchanted us and made that thing seem worthy of every honor and sacrifice - are we now inescapably bound? Weren't we in fact deceiving ourselves at the time? Wasn't it a hypothetical promise, made under the admittedly unspoken assumption that those beings to whom we dedicated ourselves really were what we imagined them to be? Are we obligated to be true to our errors, even after we have seen that we are doing damage to our higher self as a result of this loyalty? - No, there is no law, no obligation of this kind; we must be traitors, act unfaithfully, forsake our ideals again and again. We do not advance from one period of life into another without arousing and continuing to suffer from these pains of betrayal. In order to avoid these pains, would we have to guard ourselves against the upsurge of our feelings? Wouldn't the world then become too barren, too spectral for us? We should instead ask ourselves whether these pains are a necessary consequence of a change in convictions or whether they do not in fact depend upon an erroneous opinion and estimation. Why do we admire someone who remains true to his convictions and despise someone who changes them? I fear that the answer must be: because everyone presumes that only motives based upon the more vulgar sorts of advantage or personal fear can cause such a change. That is to say: we basically believe that nobody changes his opinions as long as they are advantageous for him, or at least as long as they do not do him any harm. But if this were the case, it would provide grim testimony about the intellectual significance of all convictions...