Notes on Nietzsche
Notes on Reading Nietzsche
Reading Nietzsche is a transformative experience for me.
Nietzsche's philosophy is complex and multifaceted, and it is not always clear what his exact views were on certain topics.
More even than with most thinkers, people have taken very different sorts of things from Nietzsche with his perspectivist approach serving as a bit of a Rorschach test, revealing insights to the unconscious world view and pre-conceived attitudes of the reader.
This is partly a function of his style, which is epigrammatic, literary, and sometimes elusive to the point of enigma.
Nietzsche's aphoristic style, a fusion of poetry, metaphor and difficult concepts, pitched somewhere between allegory and literal statement, is a unique method making his writings prone to misreading and misinterpretation and ripe for misappropriation by eclectic causes and even opposing movements.
As with all philosophers, but perhaps even more applicable to Nietzsche, is to ability maintain awareness of the differing definitions of many key terms which today evoke a different meaning than that used in the context of 19th century philosophy.
Nietzsche had a note-taking practice of transcribing whole passages of things that he was reading directly into his notebooks. This habit of Nietzsche's should furnish a reminder, for the more zealous and incautious among the Nachlass citers, that Nietzsche's notebooks are precisely that, places where he is writing down notes, including a mixture of things, some of which he himself thinks, some of which he is toying with, and some of which he's simply read and copied out, with which he may or may not agree. His notebooks are not unpublished books of his ideas, and they should not be treated as such … a warning that alas often goes unheeded.
His positions are often more complex than appears at first glance. For example, just because Nietzsche critiques something, does not mean that he is condemning it. Nietzsche loves the tension of oppositions, sometimes paradoxically seeming to affirm and negate each side.
It is important to understand the historical and cultural context in which Nietzsche lived and wrote, as this not only influenced his philosophy, it can affect the interpretation of his ideas.
Philosophy is about questioning, challenging, and thinking beyond the norms imposed on us. If your first concern when reading Nietzsche is whether he aligns with modern moral standards, then you’ve already missed the point. His whole philosophy is a critique of herd mentality and the morality that people blindly accept without questioning. Instead of asking whether Nietzsche was “problematic,” ask yourself why you even care so much. That concern itself is a symptom of the very mindset he despised.
While some of his views may be controversial or even offensive by today's standards, he was writing in a very different era than our own.
Some may criticize Nietzsche for not living the philosophy he espoused, however due to his tragic life of suffering perhaps it was not possible for him…or for most mere mortals.
“There is a false saying:” How can someone who can’t save himself save others?” Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?”
~ Zarathustra
Even flawed individuals can contribute to knowledge. Good ideas should be evaluated based on their own merits.
I’d argue that what sets Nietzsche apart is not just his ideas but the way he presented them. Unlike many philosophers who systematized their thoughts into logical frameworks, Nietzsche wrote with an almost poetic intensity, blending philosophy with psychology, art, and literature.
He didn’t just ask questions about morality, truth, and existence—he dismantled the very assumptions those questions stood on. Concepts like the Übermensch, eternal recurrence, and the death of God aren’t just philosophical arguments; they’re provocations, designed to unsettle and awaken.
Nietzsche isn’t ‘special’ because he answered questions better than others, but because he forced us to confront ourselves in ways that remain deeply personal and timeless. His work doesn’t end on the page—it bleeds into how you see the world and yourself.
Nietzsche’s own unique, poetic writing style can account for much of the renown his ideas continue to receive (and also much of the criticism levelled at him by other philosophers). Reading Nietzsche may at times be arduous and convoluted, but it is never dull.
He himeself recognized that his books were not written for the masses.
“These alone are my readers, my rightful readers, my predestined readers: what do the rest matter? – The rest are merely mankind.”
main concepts
Social Constructionism - what we consider true or epistemic changes from time to time and place to place. Understanding this is the root of social critique. This isn't strictly Nietzschean but having it in your vocabulary will make a massive difference.
"God is Dead" - the foundational beliefs on which our social norms and customs, epistemology, justice and legal theory, and everything else are built are no longer believable, leaving everything built on that foundation poised to crumble. We believed there was a God when we built this thing, so we built it around him. Without God, we've built everything on nothing. We've opened a vacuum that could be filled will all kinds of nonsense.
Ressentiment - moralizing achievements and behaviors you are incapable of as "perverse" so you can feel morally superior to those who have what is inaccessible to you. For example, if you don't have any money you can avoid feeling inferior to the rich by declaring poverty to be a virtue ("The meek will inherit the earth"). Per Nietzsche, all morality is built on ressentiment.
Slave Morality vs. Master Morality - modes of morality at odds with each other. The slave moralizes the inherent goodness of their social position and the aristocrat does the same. This yields very different moralistic cultures with "slaves" venerating meekness and piety, and the "masters" venerating nobility and power.
Apollonian vs. Dionysian - a fragile balanced conflict between noble order and frenzied chaos. Expressions of art, in Nietzsche's mind, reveal the artist's coherence of this balance with Apollonianism manifesting as order and rationality and Dionysianism manifesting as the strength found in care-free individuality. You need both in your expression, even though they compete for the favor of the artist.
Eternal Recurrence - the awareness that one's life has no real beginning or end, and thus all choices and attitudes adopted in life are permanent. Think of it this way: you do not remember being born, and you will not remember dying. For you, there is only the infinite here and now. What you do matters because it isn't undone when you're gone. The version of reality that includes you is happening right now.
"How the true world finally became a fiction" - Before we had constructed and then believed a narrative about metaphysics and afterlives, we believed the world we lived in was the real one. We have since taught ourselves and each other that it isn't real and nothing real will ever happen until after you die. This is bullshit. You're in the real world.
once proclaimed, "All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." This quote encapsulates skepticism towards the notion of objective truth and highlights the inherent relationship between interpretation, power, and prevailing beliefs.
To understand Nietzsche's statement, we must delve into his philosophy of perspectivism. Nietzsche rejected the idea of absolute truth, arguing that there are no fixed, universally valid truths that exist independently of human perspectives. Instead, he posited that truth is contingent upon the interpretations and perspectives of individuals, shaped by their unique experiences, biases, and cultural contexts. Therefore, the understanding of truth becomes a subjective matter, varying from one individual or group to another.
Furthermore, Nietzsche emphasized the role of power in shaping interpretations and determining which perspective becomes dominant. In society, different groups and individuals hold varying degrees of power, be it political, economic, or social. Those in power often have the means to impose their interpretations on others, creating a hegemony of beliefs. The prevailing interpretation, according to Nietzsche, is not a reflection of objective truth but rather a product of power dynamics. The dominant group, through its influence and control, molds the narrative and suppresses alternative viewpoints.
This perspective challenges the traditional notion of truth as an objective and immutable entity. It unveils the underlying dynamics of power struggles and the influence they wield in shaping our understanding of reality. Nietzsche's quote suggests that the dominant interpretation of truth is not necessarily the most accurate or truthful one but rather a reflection of the interests and aspirations of those who hold power.
However, it is important to note that Nietzsche's assertion does not imply that truth itself is irrelevant or nonexistent. Rather, he argues that our access to truth is always mediated through interpretation, and these interpretations are influenced by power dynamics. Nietzsche's emphasis on the subjectivity of truth encourages critical thinking and questioning of dominant narratives. It urges individuals to challenge the prevailing interpretations and consider alternative viewpoints that may have been marginalized or suppressed.
In the modern world, Nietzsche's quote holds significant relevance. It reminds us to question the dominant narratives that shape our understanding of reality and to recognize the inherent biases and interests that may be at play. It encourages us to seek diverse perspectives, engage in critical discourse, and resist the temptation to accept the prevailing interpretation without scrutiny.
In conclusion, Nietzsche's quote, "All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth," underscores his philosophy of perspectivism and sheds light on the complex relationship between interpretation, power, and truth. It serves as a reminder to remain vigilant in our pursuit of knowledge and to challenge the prevailing interpretations that may be driven by power dynamics rather than a quest for objective truth.
Transvaluation of Values - comparing existing value systems, or inverting them, to get a better look at them. Nietzsche uses Buddhism and Christianity in a brilliant example. Christians deny human impulses as "sinful" (see: Ressentiment) and their highest value is the condemnation of sin. They suffer a great deal from this. Buddhists, on the other hand, eschew suffering and seek its avoidance as their highest value, yet they do not need to seek out sins to do so. When comparing the two, the self-indulgent benevolence of Christianity collapses as ridiculous. You can, and should, do this with any and all value systems especially the ones you might believe to be true or worthy of your piety.
Will to Power
Nietzsche was fairly clear about what will to power is. It is a description of life as that which strives to overcome itself. He also writes that what life wishes is to express its strength, which is in contrast to views of life as wishing to preserve itself as it is.
In the moral context, this means that every morality is a means of self-overcoming: for the individual to become greater than what they are now by subordinating their impulses to a higher goal. In psychology, this means that human actions are always aimed at the expression of strength. In terms of biology, it means that evolution isn’t a static process that creates enduring forms, but an endlessly moving character of life (a focus on the mutation/exception rather than the rule).
As far as a monistic metaphysical principle goes: this is a bit more complicated to explain, but in so many words we might say that Nietzsche isn’t claiming to have peeked behind the appearance of reality to perceive a unified essence. Instead, will to power is the principle he sees in the character of the world of appearance. It doesn’t depend on unity, but on irreconcilable differences. He sees a reality of striving forces with mutually exclusive goals that enter into conflict. For Nietzsche, the distinction between essence and appearance is abolished, and the real world reconsidered as the world of our experience.
Another intrepreation…..everyone, and everything everyone creates, is competing for influence. The Will to Power is a tongue-in-cheek unified theory of human behavior based on some of the other concepts above. The slave who allows himself to be convinced he is morally superior in his existence is merely a powerless individual attempting to reclaim some of their power, and thus their influence on their own perception. The wretched, even without realizing it, apply for your pity. Likewise, Nietzsche himself is admitting to wanting to persuade you of his way of thinking, just as you wish to persuade others to yours at the very least. At the very MOST, you're perfectly capable of getting into power struggles with others who are also vying for influence in just about any sphere of life and society.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and social and political pieties associated with modernity.
The Will to Power aka ‘der Wille zur Macht’
o The force by which all things in nature exert and expand their claim on existence
Morality
o The Higher Man
o Herd Morality
Beyond Good and Evil, he says: "Our highest insights must – and should – sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them."
Nihilism
Suffering
Truth
Mathematics would certainly not have come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no such thing as a straight line, no perfect circle or absolute magnitude.
~ Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 11
“The laws of numbers assume there are identical things, but in fact nothing is identical with anything else.
~ Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 19
Math does not correspond to the real world…failing the correspondence theory of truth.
Math is not truth as defined as defined by the correspondence theory.
Because it does not correspond with reality.
Or does it….?
The nature of Truth is fundamentally ambiguous
The nature of our reality, which is constantly subject to change, is thus ambiguous.
The nature of truth and the nature of reality are each fundamentally ambiguous thus corresponding to the correspondence theory of truth.
Thus, truth equals reality and is subjective and perspective dependent.
-
there isn’t an ultimate truth to be found in words - probably also because words can be understood in various ways
Limits: "All the different languages set alongside one another show that when it comes to words, truth full and adequate expression is never what matters, otherwise there wouldn't be so many languages. The thing in itself is utterly unintelligible, even for the creator of a language and certainly nothing to strive for, for he designates the relations of things to human beings and helps himself to the boldest metaphors. First to transfer nerve stimulus into an image, first metaphor. Then the image again copied in a sound, second metaphor. And each time a completely out of one sphere into an entirely new and different one...Every concept arises by means of equating the unequal."
Math is not truth??
Mathematics would certainly not have come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no such thing as a straight line, no perfect circle or absolute magnitude. (Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 11)
The laws of numbers assume there are identical things, but in fact nothing is identical with anything else. (Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 19)
The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live.... (Beyond Good & Evil, "On the Prejudices of Philosophers", section 4)
§ Atomic facts: "What is a law of nature for us anyway? It is not known to us in itself but only in its effects in relation to other laws of nature, which are again known to us only as relations. All these relations in turn refer only to one another and are therefore thoroughly unintelligible to us in their essence"
§ Truths are tautological: "If someone hides a thing behind a bush, then looks for it and finds it again in the same place, the seeking and the findings are not much to brag about; yet this is how things stand with the seeking and finding of Truth in the realm of reason. If I give the definition of mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel I declare "A mammal!" a truth had been declared, but one of the limited value, by which I mean just contains not a single point that would be “true in itself," real and universally valid apart from man.
-Nietzsche
The Overman
Amor Fati
The Eternal Recurrence
Live life as if eternal recurrence
Amor Fati
God is dead
First mentioned in Zarathustra.
Morality is relative
On Free Will:
The notions of "free" and "determined" have no meaning if one dismisses with a Kantian justification of causality and an ego, or "soul-atomism" as Nietzsche calls it. Nietzsche considers causality to be a useful fiction which helped humans to survive (yet doesn't, for that reason, make it true. There's a note in WTP that says this explicitly). The problem with free will and determinism is that they tend to paint a picture of human action that has a stable ego/soul/"I" (think Descartes's cogito, and eventually Kant's Transcendental Ideal of Self), and this soul either moves itself, or is moved as a unitary "I" by a force outside of it. But for Nietzsche, the human being is not a unity; rather it's defined by a plurality of forces that "compete" for dominance. These forces don't compete for any conscious goal (and in fact, according to Nietzsche, no action that a human being takes is because of a motivation; the motivation follows the action. Check "The Four Great Errors" in Twilight of the Idols).
It's tough to conceptualize because we're used to feeling our selves as a unity. Chapter 1 of BG+E makes comments on this false unity. The human body (which is all that exists, as the "soul" is a fiction) is a field of forces in a hierarchy set by the most powerful drive. "We" then identify with the drive which wins in the competition, and say that "we" chose the action we took -- really it was just the drive.
In sum: We are fated, not because our "self" is determined by something outside, but because there isn't even a self. Whoever you are at the moment is the drive which dominates. You don't control the drive (hence no free will), because this would be the drive... "controlling" itself. Hope that makes sense, Nietzsche makes seemingly contradictory statements about will and causality that scholars can't agree on all the time.
“These alone are my readers, my rightful readers, my predestined readers: what do the rest matter? – The rest are merely mankind.”
-‘The Antichrist’
“To become master of the chaos one is…that is the grand ambition here.”
-‘The Will To Power’
“Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!:
-‘The Antichrist’
“Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law?”
-‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’
‘The Herd Instinct’
Within every individual exists a ‘herd instinct’ – an innate need to obey and conform
‘Morality’
Designates what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ or ‘evil’
Since truth does not exist, finding the answer to the meaning of life is an impossibility.
“I undertook something that not everyone may undertake I descended into the depths, I bored into the foundation”
~preface, ‘Dawn of Morning’
A fear of descending…< See quote in book>…could engender permanent madness. He went mad!
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss , the abyss also gazes into you.”
~ Nietzsche
Why should we listen to a man who went mad?
“There is a false saying:” How can someone who can’t save himself save others?” Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?”
~ Nietzsche
Nietzsche (one of the first to cast doubt on Hegelian optimism) the question why has no answer anymore, God is dead we have killed him, he was the placeholder for our higher values.
§ Limits: "All the different languages set alongside one another show that when it comes to words, truth full and adequate expression is never what matters, otherwise there wouldn't be so many languages. The thing in itself is utterly unintelligible, even for the creator of a language and certainly nothing to strive for, for he designates the relations of things to human beings and helps himself to the boldest metaphors. First to transfer nerve stimulus into an image, first metaphor. Then the image again copied in a sound, second metaphor. And each time a completely out of one sphere into an entirely new and different one...Every concept arises by means of equating the unequal."
§ Atomic facts: "What is a law of nature for us anyway? It is not known to us in itself but only in its effects in relation to other laws of nature, which are again known to us only as relations. All these relations in turn refer only to one another and are therefore thoroughly unintelligible to us in their essence"
§ Truths are tautological: "If someone hides a thing behind a bush, then looks for it and finds it again in the same place, the seeking and the findings are not much to brag about; yet this is how things stand with the seeking and finding of Truth in the realm of reason. If I give the definition of mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel I declare "A mammal!" a truth had been declared, but one of the limited value, by which I mean just contains not a single point that would be “true in itself," real and universally valid apart from man.
-Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Why did Nietzsche choose Zarathustra as his mouthpiece?
The historical Zarathustra/Zoroaster was the first prophet/philosopher. He was the father of the first monotheistic religion, the one who came up with the binary concept of Good/Evil, he originated the idea of Heaven/Hell, and the linear teleological view of time, that these struggles between good and evil will culminate in utopia at the end of history.
Zoroaster was a sort of ascetic who abandoned his parents in his 20's and had a revelation in his 30's. Nietzsche evidently identified with this.
“There is a false saying:” How can someone who can’t save himself save others?” Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?”
A beautiful mix of metaphor, poetry with literal concepts and unless you understand this it is easy to misread him.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and cultural critic who published intensively in the 1870s and 1880s. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and social and political pieties associated with modernity.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy.
The Will to Power aka ‘der Wille zur Macht’
o The force by which all things in nature exert and expand their claim on existence
Morality
o The Higher Man
o Herd Morality
Beyond Good and Evil, he says: "Our highest insights must – and should – sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them."
Nihilism
Suffering
Truth
Mathematics would certainly not have come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no such thing as a straight line, no perfect circle or absolute magnitude.
~ Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 11
“The laws of numbers assume there are identical things, but in fact nothing is identical with anything else.
~ Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 19
Math does not correspond to the real world…failing the correspondence theory of truth.
Math is not truth as defined as defined by the correspondence theory.
Because it does not correspond with reality.
Or does it….?
The nature of Truth is fundamentally ambiguous
The nature of our reality, which is constantly subject to change, is thus ambiguous.
The nature of truth and the nature of reality are each fundamentally ambiguous thus corresponding to the correspondence theory of truth.
Thus, truth equals reality and is subjective and perspective dependent.
-
there isn’t an ultimate truth to be found in words - probably also because words can be understood in various ways
Limits: "All the different languages set alongside one another show that when it comes to words, truth full and adequate expression is never what matters, otherwise there wouldn't be so many languages. The thing in itself is utterly unintelligible, even for the creator of a language and certainly nothing to strive for, for he designates the relations of things to human beings and helps himself to the boldest metaphors. First to transfer nerve stimulus into an image, first metaphor. Then the image again copied in a sound, second metaphor. And each time a completely out of one sphere into an entirely new and different one...Every concept arises by means of equating the unequal."
Math is not truth??
Mathematics would certainly not have come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no such thing as a straight line, no perfect circle or absolute magnitude. (Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 11)
The laws of numbers assume there are identical things, but in fact nothing is identical with anything else. (Human, All Too Human, “Of First and Last Things”, section 19)
The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live.... (Beyond Good & Evil, "On the Prejudices of Philosophers", section 4)
§ Atomic facts: "What is a law of nature for us anyway? It is not known to us in itself but only in its effects in relation to other laws of nature, which are again known to us only as relations. All these relations in turn refer only to one another and are therefore thoroughly unintelligible to us in their essence"
§ Truths are tautological: "If someone hides a thing behind a bush, then looks for it and finds it again in the same place, the seeking and the findings are not much to brag about; yet this is how things stand with the seeking and finding of Truth in the realm of reason. If I give the definition of mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel I declare "A mammal!" a truth had been declared, but one of the limited value, by which I mean just contains not a single point that would be “true in itself," real and universally valid apart from man.
-Nietzsche
The Overman
Amor Fati
The Eternal Recurrence
Live life as if eternal recurrence
Amor Fati
God is dead
First mentioned in Zarathustra.
Morality is relative
“These alone are my readers, my rightful readers, my predestined readers: what do the rest matter? – The rest are merely mankind.”
-‘The Antichrist’
“To become master of the chaos one is…that is the grand ambition here.”
-‘The Will To Power’
“Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!:
-‘The Antichrist’
“Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law?”
-‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’
‘The Herd Instinct’
Within every individual exists a ‘herd instinct’ – an innate need to obey and conform
‘Morality’
Designates what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ or ‘evil’
Since truth does not exist, finding the answer to the meaning of life is an impossibility.
“I undertook something that not everyone may undertake I descended into the depths, I bored into the foundation”
~preface, ‘Dawn of Morning’
A fear of descending…< See quote in book>…could engender permanent madness. He went mad!
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss , the abyss also gazes into you.”
~ Nietzsche
Why should we listen to a man who went mad?
“There is a false saying:” How can someone who can’t save himself save others?” Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?”
~ Nietzsche
Nietzsche (one of the first to cast doubt on Hegelian optimism) the question ‘why’ has no answer anymore, God is dead we have killed him, he was the placeholder for our higher values.
§ Limits: "All the different languages set alongside one another show that when it comes to words, truth full and adequate expression is never what matters, otherwise there wouldn't be so many languages. The thing in itself is utterly unintelligible, even for the creator of a language and certainly nothing to strive for, for he designates the relations of things to human beings and helps himself to the boldest metaphors. First to transfer nerve stimulus into an image, first metaphor. Then the image again copied in a sound, second metaphor. And each time a completely out of one sphere into an entirely new and different one...Every concept arises by means of equating the unequal."
§ Atomic facts: "What is a law of nature for us anyway? It is not known to us in itself but only in its effects in relation to other laws of nature, which are again known to us only as relations. All these relations in turn refer only to one another and are therefore thoroughly unintelligible to us in their essence"
§ Truths are tautological: "If someone hides a thing behind a bush, then looks for it and finds it again in the same place, the seeking and the findings are not much to brag about; yet this is how things stand with the seeking and finding of Truth in the realm of reason. If I give the definition of mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel I declare "A mammal!" a truth had been declared, but one of the limited value, by which I mean just contains not a single point that would be “true in itself," real and universally valid apart from man.
-Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Why did Nietzsche choose Zarathustra as his mouthpiece?
The historical Zarathustra/Zoroaster was the first prophet/philosopher. He was the father of the first monotheistic religion, the one who came up with the binary concept of Good/Evil, he originated the idea of Heaven/Hell, and the linear teleological view of time, that these struggles between good and evil will culminate in utopia at the end of history.
Zoroaster was a sort of ascetic who abandoned his parents in his 20's and had a revelation in his 30's. Nietzsche evidently identified with this.
According to scholars Zarathustra was born around between 1500 and 500 BCE.
Descent to Madness?
His father died of a ‘brain ailment’.
Nietzsche himself had various illnesses throughout his life and suffered at least two strokes.
Referring to the individual who descends into the depths of the mind, Nietzsche wrote:
“He enters a labyrinth, and multiplies a thousandfold the dangers that life in itself brings with it – of which not the least is that nobody can see how and where he loses his way, becomes solitary, and is torn to pieces by some cave-minotaur of conscience.”
~ Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
“In the darkness of the unconscious a treasure lies hidden, the… “treasure hard to attain”…the fight against the paralyzing grip of the unconscious calls forth man’s creative powers…it needs heroic courage to do battle with these forces and to wrest from them the treasure hard to attain. Whoever succeeds in this has triumphed indeed.”
~ Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation
“I was sitting at my desk…thinking over my fears. Then I let myself drop. Suddenly it was as though the ground literally gave way at my feet, and I plunged down into dark depths.”
~ Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
“I stood helpless before an alien world; everything in it seemed difficult and incomprehensible. I was living in a constant state of tension; often I felt as if gigantic blocks of stone were tumbling down upon me.”
~ Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
“It was most essential for me to have a normal life in the real world as a counterpoise to that strange inner world…The unconscious contents could have driven me out of my wits. But my family, and the knowledge: I have a medical diploma…I must help my patients, I have a wife and five children…these were actualities which made demands upon me and proved to me again and again that I really existed.”
~ Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
“Nietzsche had lost the ground under his feet because he possessed nothing more than the inner world of his thoughts which incidentally possessed him more than he it. He was uprooted and hovered above the earth, and therefore he succumbed to exaggeration and irreality.”
~ Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
“…the approach or invasion of the unconscious can cause…a dangerous inflation, for one of the most obvious dangers is that of identifying with the figures in the unconscious. For anyone with an unstable disposition this may amount to a psychosis.” (Jung)
~ Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis
“There are two kinds of madness, one arising from human diseases, and the other from a divine release from the customary habits. . . ”
~ Plato, Phaedrus
“Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.”
~ Plato
“Madness is a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention.”
~ Plato
“Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.”
~ Plato
“…[my] individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality… seeming no extinction but the only true life.”
~ Alfred Tennyson, The Divine Mania by Yulia Ustinova
“…the reluctance to acknowledge that being in a non-ordinary state of consciousness is not synonymous to being mad is characteristic of our culture, which tends to medicalise the nonconformities, especially behavioural deviance. In historical and cultural situations different from the modern Western norm, people take for granted that a person may be out of his or her mind, but not crazy; for instance, in the traditional Inuit society a shaman while healing is not deemed mad. In our society, the idea that deviation from the normal state of consciousness may be beneficial is still considered by many extravagant, if not preposterous.”
~ Yulia Ustinova, Divine Mania: Alteration of Consciousness in Ancient Greece
“For instance, he once said to his sister: “Are we not quite happy?” – perfectly reasonably, and then he was gone…People have concluded…that his madness was a divine mania – what the Greeks called mania, a divine state, the state of being filled with the god; one is entheos, the god is within. The remark was quoted as evidence that he had reached a sort of nirvana condition.” (Nietzsche’s Zarathustra)
~ Carl Jung, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
“Now all is still! The sea lies there pale and glittering, it cannot speak. The sky plays its everlasting silent evening game…it cannot speak. . . O sea, O evening! You are evil instructors! You teach man to cease being a man! Shall he surrender to you? Shall he become as you now are, pale, glittering, mute, tremendous, reposing above himself? Exalted above himself?”
~ Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day
“His coming brings madness.”, Walter Otto wrote, regarding Dionysus.
~ Walter Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult
“The madness which is called Dionysus is no sickness, no disability in life, but a companion of life at its healthiest…[it is a madness] which ushers in primal salvation amid primal pain.”
~ Walter Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult
On the day of his break on January 3, 1889, Nietzsche penned the following in a letter:
“I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will make the earth a festival.”
~ Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s Letters
On January 6, 1889, Nietzsche wrote to Jacob Burckhardt:
“When it comes right down to it I’d much rather have been a Basel professor than God; but I didn’t dare be selfish enough to forgo the creation of the world.”
~ Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s Letters
Two days earlier, Nietzsche penned the following letter to Cosima Wagner:
“It is a mere prejudice that I am a human being. Yet I have often enough dwelled among human beings and I know the things human beings experience, from the lowest to the highest. Among the Hindus I was Buddha, in Greece Dionysus – Alexander and Caesar were incarnations of me, as well as the poet of Shakespeare, Lord Bacon. Most recently I was Voltaire and Napoleon, perhaps also Richard Wagner…I also hung on the cross.”
~ Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s Letters
Within the span of these days he wrote the ominous line:
“What is unpleasant and jeopardizes my modesty is that, fundamentally, I am every name in history.”
~ Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s Letters
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
List of names that are often associated with Nietzsche's writing, style, influence, or values:
Influenced by: Goethe, Schopenhauer, Stirner, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Montaigne, Spinoza...
Influenced: Freud, Jung, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Bataille, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Jünger, Adorno, Brandes, Buber, Jaspers, Bergson, Sartre, Camus, Leo Strauss, Evola, Cioran, Unamuno, Shestov, Rand, Ortega y Gasset, Steiner, Tönnies, Weber, Spengler, Braudel, Veyne, Tillich, Altizer, Crowley, Neutzsky-Wulff, Kafka, Conrad, Mann, Hesse, Bukowski, Malraux, Kazantzakis, Gide, Hamsun, Strindberg, Joyce, Lawrence, Bartol, Baroja, Rilke, Yeats, Shaw, Artaud, O'Neill, Lovecraft, Stapledon, Braak, London, Mencken, Sloterdijk, Rorty, Kittler, Adler, Maslow...
Top Five Misconceptions of Nietzsche
1) People can become an Übermensch
Never yet has there been an overman. Naked I saw both the greatest and the smallest man: they are still all-too-similar to each other. Verily, even the greatest I found all-too-human. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra II 'On Priests')
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God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures should not reach beyond your creative will. Could you create a god? Then do not speak to me of any gods. But you could well create the overman. Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers. But into fathers and forefathers of the overman you could re-create yourselves: and let this be your best creation. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra II 'Upon the Blessed Isles')
2) The Übermensch is an ideal individual
Whoever thought he had understood something of me, had made up something out of me after his own image — not uncommonly an antithesis to me; for example, an "idealist" — and whoever had understood nothing of me, denied that I need be considered at all.
The word "overman", as the designation of a type of supreme achievement, as opposed to "modem" men, to "good" men, to Christians and other nihilists — a word that in the mouth of a Zarathustra, the annihilator of morality, becomes a very pensive word — has been understood almost everywhere with the utmost innocence in the sense of those very values whose opposite Zarathustra was meant to represent — that is, as an "idealistic" type of a higher kind of man, half "saint", half "genius." (Ecce Homo 'Why I Write Such Good Books' §1)
3) Nietzsche endorsed psychopathic brutality
...between good and evil actions there is no difference in kind, but at the most one of degree. Good actions are sublimated evil ones; evil actions are coarsened, brutalized good ones. [...] Degrees of intelligent judgement decide whither each person will let his desire draw him; every society, every individual always has present an order of rank of things considered good, according to which he determines his own actions and judges those of others. But this standard is continually changing, many actions are called evil but are only stupid, because the degree of intelligence which decided for them was very low. (Human, All-Too Human I §107)
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It goes without saying that I do not deny — unless I am a fool — that many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted, or that many called moral ought to be done and encouraged — but I think the one should be encouraged and the other avoided for other reasons than hitherto. We have to learn to think differently — in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently. (Daybreak §103)
4) Nietzsche was "for" or "against" nihilism
Nihilism as a psychological state will have to be reached, first, when we have sought a [1] "meaning" in all events that is not there: so the seeker eventually becomes discouraged. Nihilism, then, is the recognition of the long waste of strength, the agony of the "in vain", insecurity, the lack of any opportunity to recover and to regain composure — being ashamed in front of oneself, as if one had deceived oneself all too long. [...]
Nihilism as a psychological state is reached, secondly, when one has posited a [2] totality, a systematization, indeed any organization in all events, and underneath all events, and a soul that longs to admire and revere has wallowed in the idea of some supreme form of domination and administration [...] Some sort of unity, some form of "monism": this faith suffices to give man a deep feeling of standing in the context of, and being dependent on, some whole that is infinitely superior to him, and he sees himself as a mode of the deity. — "The well-being of the universal demands the devotion of the individual" — but behold, there is no such universal! At bottom, man has lost the faith in his own value when no in finitely valuable whole works through him; i.e., he conceived such a whole in order to be able to believe in his own value.
Nihilism as psychological state has yet a third and last form. Given these two insights, that becoming has no goal and that underneath all becoming there is no grand unity in which the individual could immerse himself completely as in an element of supreme value, an escape remains: to pass sentence on this whole world of becoming as a deception and to invent a world beyond it, a true world. But as soon as man finds out how that world is fabricated solely from psychological needs, and how he has absolutely no right to it, the last form of nihilism comes into being: it includes disbelief in any metaphysical world and forbids itself any belief in a [3] true world. Having reached this standpoint, one grants the reality of becoming as the only reality, forbids oneself every kind of clandestine access to afterworlds and false divinities — but cannot endure this world though one does not want to deny it.
What has happened, at bottom? The feeling of valuelessness was reached with the realization that the overall character of existence may not be interpreted by means of the concept of [1] "aim", the concept of [2] "unity", or the concept of [3] "truth". Existence has no goal or end; any comprehensive unity in the plurality of events is lacking: the character of existence is not "true", is false. One simply lacks any reason for convincing oneself that there is a true world. Briefly: the categories [1] "aim", [2] "unity", [3] "being" which we used to project some value into the world — we pull out again; so the world looks valueless. (The Will to Power §12)
Nihilism represents a pathological transitional stage (what is pathological is the tremendous generalization, the inference that there is no meaning at all): whether the productive forces are not yet strong enough, or whether decadence still hesitates and has not yet invented its remedies. [...] (The Will to Power §13)
Nihilism. It is ambiguous:
A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism.
B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism. (The Will to Power §22)
Nihilism as a normal condition.
It can be a sign of strength: the spirit may have grown so strong that previous goals ("convictions," articles of faith) have become incommensurate (for a faith generally expresses the constraint of conditions of existence, submission to the authority of circumstances under which one flourishes, grows, gains power).
Or a sign of the lack of strength to posit for oneself, productively, a goal, a why, a faith. (The Will to Power §23)
5) Nietzsche's immoralism is a licence for incivility
The good four.— Honest towards ourselves and whoever else is a friend to us; brave towards the enemy; magnanimous towards the defeated; polite — always: this is what the four cardinal virtues want us to be. (Daybreak §556)
Nietzsche on Stoicism
''You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.''
~ Beyond Good and Evil
