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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche

 

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Title: Beyond Good and Evil

Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

Translator: Helen Zimmern

 

Release Date: August, 2003  [Etext #4363]

Posting Date: December 7, 2009

 

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

 

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL ***

 

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION:

 

The following is a reprint of the Helen Zimmern translation from German

into English of "Beyond Good and Evil," as published in The Complete

Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913). Some adaptations from the

original text were made to format it into an e-text. Italics in the

original book are capitalized in this e-text, except for most foreign

language phrases that were italicized. Original footnotes are put in

brackets "[]" at the points where they are cited in the text. Some

spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today"

and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original

text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as

"idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

    PREFACE

    BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

 

    CHAPTER I:    PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS

    CHAPTER II:   THE FREE SPIRIT

    CHAPTER III:  THE RELIGIOUS MOOD

    CHAPTER IV:   APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES

    CHAPTER V:    THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS

    CHAPTER VI:   WE SCHOLARS

    CHAPTER VII:  OUR VIRTUES

    CHAPTER VIII: PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES

    CHAPTER IX:   WHAT IS NOBLE?

 

    FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM TRANSLATED BY L.A. MAGNUS)

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

 

 

SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not ground

for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been

dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible

seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid

their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for

winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and

at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien--IF,

indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it

has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground--nay more, that it is at

its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping

that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive

and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism

and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once

and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such

imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have

hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time

(such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and

ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some

play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an

audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very

human--all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to

be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was

astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more

labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any

actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terrestrial"

pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems

that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with

everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the

earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has

been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in

Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although

it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,

and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist

error--namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself.

But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare,

can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier--sleep,

we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength

which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to

the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE--the

fundamental condition--of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato

spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a

malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked

Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of

youths, and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against Plato,

or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle against

the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR

CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPLE"), produced in Europe

a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere

previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the

furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as

a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to

unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means

of democratic enlightenment--which, with the aid of liberty of the press

and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit

would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented

gunpowder--all credit to them! but they again made things square--they

invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,

nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free

spirits--we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the

tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who

knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT....

 

Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS

 

 

1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous

enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have

hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not

laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is

already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is

it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn

impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions

ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really

is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the

question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an

absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired

about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT

RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the

value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented

ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which

the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of

interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as

if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first

to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk

in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.

 

2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth

out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the

generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the

wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams

of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest

value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this

transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of

delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in

the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the

'Thing-in-itself--THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"--This

mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which

metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation

is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of

theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that

is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of

metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred

even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where

doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn

vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM." For it may be doubted, firstly, whether

antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations

and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their

seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional

perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from

below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current

among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true,

the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher

and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to

pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It

might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and

respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously

related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed

things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps!

But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"!

For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of

philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the

reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous

"Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I

see such new philosophers beginning to appear.

 

3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between

their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of

conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and

it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to

learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As

little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process

and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED

to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the

conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his

instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and

its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak

more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite

mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the

uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations,

in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be

only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may

be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,

in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things."

 

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is

here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. 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--that the renunciation of false opinions would be

a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A

CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of

value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so,

has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.

 

5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully

and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they

are--how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in

short, how childish and childlike they are,--but that there is not

enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and

virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in

the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had

been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure,

divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics,

who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a

prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally

their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with

arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not

wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their

prejudices, which they dub "truths,"--and VERY far from having the

conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having

the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be

understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence

and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally

...

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