| 1871 | The Birth of Tragedy |
| p.10 | 7848 | Philosophy begins in the horror and absurdity of existence | |
| Full Idea: For Nietzsche philosophy begins in horror - existence is something both horrible and absurd | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy [1871]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - How to Read Nietzsche Ch.1 | |||
| A reaction: A striking contrast to Aristotle (Idea 549). Personally I think my philosophy begins with confusion. Not that I endorse a Wittgenteinian view, that we are just trying to cure ourselves of self-inflicted wounds. Life is very complex and we are bit simple. |
| 1872 | On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense |
| p.88 | 20363 | Leaves are unequal, but we form the concept 'leaf' by discarding their individual differences | |
| Full Idea: Every concept arises through the setting equal of the unequal. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never wholly equal to another, so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense [1872]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.1.1 n28 | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche adds an interesting aspect to psychological abstraction, of abstracting away the differences between things, which we might label as the (further) capacity for Equalisation. If two cars differ only in a blemish, we abstract away the blemish. |
| 1873 | Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks |
| p.7 | p.40 | 20130 | It is absurd to think you can change your own essence, like a garment |
| Full Idea: Man is necessity down to his last fibre, and totally 'unfree', that is if one means by freedom the foolish demand to be able to change one's 'essentia' arbitrarily, like a garment. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks [1873], p.7), quoted by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 2 'Realism' | |||
| A reaction: This is the big difference between the existentialism of Nietzsche and the more famous Sartrean approach, where the idea of being able to remake your essence is the most exciting and glamorous proposal. I'm with Nietzsche. |
| 1873 | Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 |
| 19 [024] | p.9 | 14859 | If philosophy controls science, then it has to determine its scope, and its value |
| Full Idea: The philosophy that is in control of science must also consider the extent to which science should be allowed to develop; it must determine its value! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [024]) |
| 19 [028] | p.10 | 14860 | Kant has undermined our belief in metaphysics |
| Full Idea: In a certain sense, Kant's influence was detrimental; for the belief in metaphysics has been lost. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [028]) | |||
| A reaction: As I understand it, there are two interpretations of Kant, one of which is fairly thoroughly anti-metaphysical, and another which is less so. Also one path leads to idealism and the other doesn't, but I need to research that. |
| 19 [052] | p.21 | 14861 | Philosophy ennobles the world, by producing an artistic conception of our knowledge |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is indispensable for education because it draws knowledge into an artistic conception of the world, and thereby ennobles it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [052]) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to be an unusual way of saying that philosophy aims at the unification of knowledge, which is roughly my own view. It has hard for us to keep believing that life could be 'ennobled'. |
| 19 [076] | p.28 | 14862 | Philosophy is more valuable than much of science, because of its beauty |
| Full Idea: The reason why unprovable philosophizing still has some value - more value, in fact, than many a scientific proposition - lies in the aesthetic value of such philosophizing, that is, in its beauty and sublimity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [076]) | |||
| A reaction: I am increasingly inclined to agree. I love wide-ranging and ambitious works of metaphysics, each of which is a unique creation of the human intellect (and with which no other individual will ever entirely agree). A great short paper is also beautiful. |
| 19 [086] | p.32 | 14863 | Unlike science, true wisdom involves good taste |
| Full Idea: Inherent in wisdom [sophia] is discrimination, the possession of good taste: whereas science, lacking such a refined sense of taste, gobbles up anything that is worth knowing. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [086]) | |||
| A reaction: This is blatantly unfair to science, which may lack 'taste', but at least prefers deep theories with wide-ranging explanatory power to narrow local theories. Maybe the line across the philosophical community is the one picking out those with taste? |
| 19 [110] | p.38 | 14864 | The Greeks lack a normative theology: each person has their own poetic view of things |
| Full Idea: The Greeks lack a normative theology: everyone has the right to deal with it in a poetic manner and he can believe whatever he wants. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [110]) | |||
| A reaction: There is quite a lot of record of harshness towards atheists, and the trial of Socrates seems to have been partly over theology. However, no proper theological texts have come down, or records of the teachings of the priests. |
| 19 [121] | p.41 | 14865 | We do not know the nature of one single causality |
| Full Idea: We do not know the nature of one single causality. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [121]) |
| 19 [125] | p.42 | 14866 | It always remains possible that the world just is the way it appears |
| Full Idea: Against Kant we can still object, even if we accept all his propositions, that it is still possible that the world is as it appears to us. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [125]) | |||
| A reaction: This little thought at least seems to be enough to block the slide from phenomenalism into total idealism. The idea that direct realism can never be ruled out, even if it is false, is very striking. |
| 19 [127] | p.42 | 14867 | It is just madness to think that the mind is supernatural (or even divine!) |
| Full Idea: To view 'spirit', the product of the brain, as supernatural. Even to deify it. What madness! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [127]) | |||
| A reaction: When I started philolosophy I was obliged to take mind-body dualism very seriously, but I have finally managed to drag myself to the shores of this lake of madness, where Nietzsche awaited with a helping hand. |
| 19 [153] | p.49 | 14868 | Our primary faculty is perception of structure, as when looking in a mirror |
| Full Idea: The primary faculty seems to me to be the perception of structure, that is, based upon the mirror. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [153]) | |||
| A reaction: The point about the mirror makes this such an intriguingly original idea. Personally I like very much the idea that structure is our prime perception. See Sider 2011 on structure. |
| 19 [161] | p.52 | 14869 | If some sort of experience is at the root of matter, then human knowledge is close to its essence |
| Full Idea: If pleasure, displeasure, sensation, memory, reflex movements are all part of the essence of matter, then human knowledge penetrates far more deeply into the essence of things. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [161]) | |||
| A reaction: I don't think Nietzsche is thinking of monads at this point, but his idea certainly applies to them. Leibniz rested his whole theory on the close analogy between how minds work and how matter must also work. |
| 19 [209] | p.64 | 14870 | We experience causation between willing and acting, and thereby explain conjunctions of changes |
| Full Idea: The only form of causality of which we are aware is that between willing and acting - we transfer this to all things, and thereby explain the relationship between two changes that always occur together. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [209]) | |||
| A reaction: This is a rather Humean view, of projecting our experience onto the world, but it may be that we really are experiencing real causation, just as it occurs between insentiate things. |
| 19 [235] | p.73 | 14871 | Laws of nature are merely complex networks of relations |
| Full Idea: All laws of nature are only relations between x, y and z. We define laws of nature as relations to an x, y, and z, each of which in turn, is known to us only in relation to other x's, y's and z's. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [235]) | |||
| A reaction: This could be interpreted in Armstrong's terms, as only identifying the x's, y's and z's by their universals, and then seeing laws as how those universal relate. I suspect, though, that Nietzsche has a Humean regularity pattern in mind. |
| 19 [236] | p.74 | 14872 | Our knowledge is illogical, because it rests on false identities between things |
| Full Idea: Every piece of knowledge that is beneficial to us involves an identification of nonidentical things, of things that are similar, which means that it is essentially illogical. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [236]) | |||
| A reaction: I take the thought to be that no two tigers are alike, but we call them all 'tigers' and merge them into a type, and then all our knowledge is based on this distortion. A wonderful idea. I love particulars You should love particulars. |
| 19 [238] | p.75 | 14873 | If we find a hypothesis that explains many things, we conclude that it explains everything |
| Full Idea: The feeling of certainty is the most difficult to develop. Initially one seeks explanation: if a hypothesis explains many things, we draw the conclusion that it explains everything. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 19 [238]) | |||
| A reaction: As so often, a wonderful warning from Nietzsche to other philosophers. They love to latch onto a Big Idea, and offer it as the answer to everything (especially, dare I say it, continental philosophers). |
| 21 [13] | p.104 | 14875 | Belief matters more than knowledge, and only begins when knowledge ceases |
| Full Idea: The human being starts to believe when he ceases to know. …Knowledge is not as important for the welfare of human beings as is belief. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 21 [13]) | |||
| A reaction: The first idea is now associated with Williamson (and Hossack). The second is something like the pragmatic view of belief espoused by Ramsey. |
| 23 [14] | p.119 | 14876 | Philosophy is always secondary, because it cannot support a popular culture |
| Full Idea: It is not possible to base a popular culture on philosophy. Thus, with regard to culture, philosophy never can have primary, but always only secondary, significance. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 23 [14]) | |||
| A reaction: It is the brilliance of Christianity as a set of ideas that it is simple enough to found a popular culture. A complex theology would make that impossible. Luther brought it back to its roots, when the priesthood lost touch with the people. |
| 29 [004] | p.189 | 14878 | It would better if there was no thought |
| Full Idea: It would be better if thought did not exist at all. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [004]) |
| 29 [008] | p.191 | 14879 | The most extreme scepticism is when you even give up logic |
| Full Idea: Even skepticism contains a belief: the belief in logic. The most extreme position is hence the abandoning of logic. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [008]) | |||
| A reaction: Some might say that flirting with non-classical logic (as in Graham Priest) is precisely travelling down this road. You could also be sceptical about meaning in language, so you couldn't articulate your abandonment of logic. |
| 29 [008] | p.192 | 14880 | Logic is just slavery to language |
| Full Idea: Logic is merely slavery in the fetters of language. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [008]) | |||
| A reaction: I don't think I agree with this, but I still like it. |
| 29 [019] | p.199 | 14881 | Why do people want philosophers? |
| Full Idea: Why do human beings even want philosophers? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [019]) | |||
| A reaction: It is not clear, of course, that they do want philosophers. The standard attitude to them seems to be a mixture of contempt and fear. |
| 29 [027] | p.202 | 14882 | Protest against vivisection - living things should not become objects of scientific investigation |
| Full Idea: Protest against vivisection of living things, that is, those things that are not yet dead should be allowed to live and not immediately be treated as an object for scientific investigation. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [027]) | |||
| A reaction: Wow. How many other people had come up with this idea in 1873? |
| 29 [096] | p.238 | 14883 | We should evaluate the past morally |
| Full Idea: For the past I desire above all a moral evaluation. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [096]) | |||
| A reaction: There is a bit of a contradiction with Idea 14819, of only a few years later. He was always interested in a historical approach to morality, but I'm not sure if his ethics gives a decent basis for moral assessments of remote historical eras. |
| 29 [143] | p.257 | 14884 | The shortest path to happiness is forgetfulness, the path of animals (but of little value) |
| Full Idea: If happiness were the goal, then animals would be the highest creatures. Their cynicism is grounded in forgetfulness: that is the shortest path to happiness, even if it is a happiness with little value. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [143]) |
| 29 [205] | p.274 | 14885 | The first aim of a philosopher is a life, not some works |
| Full Idea: The philosopher's product is his life (first, before his works). It is his work of art. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 29 [205]) |
| 30 [06] | p.292 | 14886 | Education is contrary to human nature |
| Full Idea: Education runs contrary to the nature of a human being. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [06]) | |||
| A reaction: Tell me about it! |
| 30 [17] | p.299 | 14887 | You should only develop a philosophy if you are willing to live by it |
| Full Idea: One should have a philosophy only to the extent that one is capable of living according to this philosophy: so that everything does not become mere words. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [17]) |
| 30 [25] | p.301 | 14888 | Wisdom prevents us from being ruled by the moment |
| Full Idea: The most important thing about wisdom is that it prevents human beings from being ruled by the moment. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 30 [25]) |
| 31 [10] | p.311 | 14889 | Philosophy is pointless if it does not advocate, and live, a new way of life |
| Full Idea: As long as philosophers do not muster the courage to advocate a lifestyle structured in an entirely different way and demonstrate it by their own example, they will come to nothing. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 31 [10]) | |||
| A reaction: This is a pretty tough requirement for the leading logicians and metaphysicians of our day, but they must face their marginality. The public will only be interested in philosophers who advocate new ways of living. |
| 32 [67] | p.336 | 14890 | Suffering is the meaning of existence |
| Full Idea: Suffering is the meaning of existence. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 [1873], 32 [67]) | |||
| A reaction: This doesn't mean that he is advocating suffering. The context of his remark is that the pursuit of truth involves suffering. |
| 1878 | Human, All Too Human |
| 006 | p.9 | 20103 | You are mastered by your own virtues, but you must master them, and turn them into tools |
| Full Idea: You had to become your own master, and also the master of your own virtues. Previously, your virtues were your master; but they must be nothing more than your tools. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 006) | |||
| A reaction: What on earth would Aristotle make of that? Nietzsche offers a sort of metatheory for virtues. I take this to be a form of particularism - that you live by your virtues, but occasionally you can discard a virtue if it seems right. Lie, steal... |
| 034 | p.37 | 20111 | We could live more naturally, relishing the spectacle, and not thinking we are special |
| Full Idea: I can imagine a life much more simple...than the present one. ...One would live among men and with oneself as in nature, without praise, reproach, overzealousness, delighting in things as in a spectacle. One would no longer feel one was more than nature. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 034) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] Safranski says this passage is a big turning point for Nietzsche, replacing his earlier idea that art could be salvation. Eternal Recurrence puts a seal on this new view. Nietzsche adds that this life needs to be 'cheerful'. |
| 039 | p.43 | 14807 | The history of morality rests on an error called 'responsibility', which rests on an error called 'free will' |
| Full Idea: The history of moral feelings is the history of an error, an error called 'responsibility', which in turn rests on an error called 'freedom of the will'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 039) | |||
| A reaction: I totally agree with this, though I think the term 'responsible' is useful in ethics, though only in the sense that the lightning was responsible for the thunder. Nietzsche appears to have anticipated Mackie's error theory about morality. |
| 041 | p.45 | 14808 | Over huge periods of time human character would change endlessly |
| Full Idea: If a man eighty thousand years old were conceivable, his character would in fact be absolutely variable. …The brevity of human life misleads us… | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 041) | |||
| A reaction: This would be one of my many exhibits for claiming Nietzsche as an existentialist. I think he is largely right, and we do detect slow shifts in our characters over long periods of time. They may be as much a response to culture as a personal matter. |
| 044 | p.46 | 14809 | All societies of good men give a priority to gratitude |
| Full Idea: Every society of good men (that is, originally, of powerful men) places gratitude among its first duties. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 044) | |||
| A reaction: His reason here is that gratitude is a way of displaying the power of the powerful! |
| 045 | p.47 | 14810 | Originally it was the rulers who requited good for good and evil for evil who were called 'good' |
| Full Idea: In the soul of the original ruling clans and castes, the man who has the power to requite goodness with goodness, evil with evil, and really does practice requital by being grateful and vengeful, is called 'good'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 045) | |||
| A reaction: The idea that evil should indeed repay evil was very much a feature of goodness until the philosophers came in on the act. In those days no one else had any power, so they had no scope for goodness. |
| 045 | p.47 | 14811 | In Homer it is the contemptible person, not the harmful person, who is bad |
| Full Idea: In Homer, both the Trojan and the Greek are good. Not the man who inflicts harm on us, but the man who is contemptible, is bad. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 045) |
| 050 | p.50 | 20112 | Pity consoles those who suffer, because they see that they still have the power to hurt |
| Full Idea: The pity that the spectators express consoles the weak and suffering, inasmuch as they see that , despite all their weakness, they still have at least one power: the power to hurt. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 050) | |||
| A reaction: This pinpoints how the will to power led to the inversion of values. |
| 059 | p.54 | 14812 | Intellect is tied to morality, because it requires good memory and powerful imagination |
| Full Idea: One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one has given. One must have strong powers of imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality bound to the quality of the intellect. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 059) | |||
| A reaction: Nice to see him say that strong powers of imagination are an 'intellectual' quality, which I think is not properly understood by the more geeky sort of intellectual. |
| 068 | p.57 | 14813 | Science rejecting the teaching of Christianity in favour of Epicurus shows the superiority of the latter |
| Full Idea: We can determine whether Christianity or Greek philosophy has the greater truth by noting that the awakening sciences have carried on point for point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but have rejected Christianity point for point. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 068) |
| 070 | p.58 | 14814 | Execution is worse than murder, because we are using the victim, and really we are the guilty |
| Full Idea: Why does execution offend us more than murder? It is the coldness of the judges, the painful preparation, the use of a man to deter others. For guilt is not being punished, which lies in the educators, parents, environment, in us, not in the murderer. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 070) | |||
| A reaction: Someone was stabbed to death in Oxford Street yesterday (26 Dec 11), and we all feel horribly that London is responsible for producing this event, even if we try and load all the blame onto one youth with a knife. Oscar Wilde endorsed this idea. |
| 082 | p.62 | 20378 | Just as skin hides the horrors of the body, vanity conceals the passions of the soul |
| Full Idea: Just as the bones, flesh, intestines, and blood vessels are enclosed with skin, which makes the sight of a man bearable, so the stirrings and passions of the soul are covered up by vanity: it is the skin of the soul. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 082) | |||
| A reaction: What a glorious analogy! None of us should underestimate our vanity. The least vain people you ever meet can reveal their vanity if you challenge them close to home. Try accusing them of vanity! Attack their essential character! (No, don't do that). |
| 091 | p.63 | 14815 | We get enormous pleasure from tales of noble actions |
| Full Idea: How much pleasure we get from morality! Just think what a river of agreeable tears has flowed at tales of noble, generous actions. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 091) | |||
| A reaction: How can anyone not adore Nietzsche? The pleasure of a noble deed is the most piercing and the deepest pleasure known to us. It isn't 'just' a pleasure. |
| 092 | p.64 | 14816 | Justice (fairness) originates among roughly equal powers (as the Melian dialogues show) |
| Full Idea: Justice (fairness) originates among approximately equal powers, as Thucydides (in the horrifying conversation between the Athenian and Melian envoys) rightly understood. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 092) | |||
| A reaction: The moral position of the powerless is a notorious problem for social contract theories of morality. They have nothing to offer in a mere contract. |
| 096 | p.66 | 14817 | The 'good' man does the moral thing as if by nature, easily and gladly, after a long inheritance |
| Full Idea: We call 'good' the man who does the moral thing as if by nature, after a long history of inheritance - that is, easily, and gladly, whatever it is. …He is called 'good' because he is good 'for' something. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 096) | |||
| A reaction: I am amazed at the brief and rather disrespectful remarks that Nietzsche makes about Aristotle's ethics, given how close this idea is to the ideal of Aristotle (though the latter who not emphasise 'inheritance'!). |
| 099 | p.69 | 14818 | First morality is force, then custom, then acceptance, then instinct, then a pleasure - and finally 'virtue' |
| Full Idea: Force precedes morality; for a time morality itself is force, to which others acquiesce. Later it becomes custom, and then free obedience, and finally almost instinct; then it is coupled to pleasure, like all habitual things, and is now called 'virtue'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 099) | |||
| A reaction: How few philosophers delve into the history of the concepts they work with, and yet how revealing it can be. Richard Taylor was wonderful on 'duty'. You will never grasp the 'problem of free will' if you don't examine its history. |
| 101 | p.70 | 14819 | Slavery cannot be judged by our standards, because the sense of justice was then less developed |
| Full Idea: The injustice of slavery, the cruelty in subjugating persons and peoples, cannot be measured by our standards. For the instinct for justice was not so widely developed then. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 101) | |||
| A reaction: Why do we value the instinct for justic which we have subsequently developed? Why do we think it is important, and battle to preserve it? This is the sort of creepy relativism that Nietzsche drifted into, and for the worse. |
| 102 | p.71 | 14820 | People always do what they think is right, according to the degree of their intellect |
| Full Idea: Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does, he always acts for the good; that is, in a way that seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the prevailing measure of his rationality. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 102) | |||
| A reaction: I associate this doctrine much more with Socrates than with Plato - but Nietzsche was a great classical scholar. |
| 103 | p.72 | 14821 | Apart from philosophers, most people rightly have a low estimate of pity |
| Full Idea: Aside from a few philosophers, men have always placed pity rather low in the hierarchy of moral feelings - and rightly so. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 103) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably this includes Jesus among the 'philosophers'. |
| 104 | p.72 | 14822 | If self-defence is moral, then so are most expressions of 'immoral' egoism |
| Full Idea: If we accept self-defense as moral, then we must also accept nearly all expressions of so-called immoral egoism. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 104) | |||
| A reaction: I find this idea rather disconcerting, because I have always thought that the clearest possible 'natural right' was that of self-defence - but this implication (if it be so) had never struck me. Hm. |
| 107 | p.74 | 14824 | It is absurd to blame nature and necessity; we should no more praise actions than we praise plants or artworks |
| Full Idea: Man may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is nonsensical to praise and blame nature and necessity. Just as he loves a work of art (or a plant) but does not praise it, because it can do nothing about itself, so he must regard human actions. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 107) | |||
| A reaction: But humans can 'do something about themselves'. They can read the works of Nietzsche. He overestimates the importance of the loss of free will, when we grasp that there is no such thing. |
| 107 | p.74 | 14823 | Ceasing to believe in human responsibility is bitter, if you had based the nobility of humanity on it |
| Full Idea: Man's complete lack of responsibility, for his behaviour and for his nature, is the bitterest drop which the man of knowledge must swallow, if he had been in the habit of seeing responsibility and duty as humanity's claim to nobility. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 107) | |||
| A reaction: If you were seeing humanity as little transient angels, living a moral life that was an echo of God's, then you needed cutting down to size. But if you ask if there is anything 'noble' in the universe, it will still be the fine deeds of humanity. |
| 107 | p.153 | 22473 | Nietzsche said the will doesn't exist, so it can't ground moral responsibility |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche challenged belief in free will, on the ground that willl itself …is non-existent. The will is in truth nothing but a complex of sensations, as of power and resistance, and it is illusion to think of it as a basis for 'moral responsibility'. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 107) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.153 | |||
| A reaction: Modern neuroscience seems to support Nietzsche on this, though I will continue to use the concept of 'will' in philosophy, to mean the main brain events which normally combine in decision-making. That makes the will a process, not a entity. |
| 111 | p.81 | 14825 | In religious thought nature is a complex of arbitrary acts by conscious beings |
| Full Idea: In the mind of religious men, all nature is the sum of actions of conscious and intentioned beings, an enormous complex of arbitrary acts. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111) | |||
| A reaction: This is the beginning of the process, I think, which then sees the gods as dictating through laws, and then the laws themselves doing the dictating, then seeing the laws as inhering in nature - and finally realising there aren't any laws! |
| 111 | p.84 | 14826 | Modern man wants laws of nature in order to submit to them |
| Full Idea: In present times, man wishes to understand the lawfulness of nature in order to submit to it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111) | |||
| A reaction: They don't make philosophers like Nietzsche any more (or at least, in the analytic tradition I am following!). No one who is trying to give an analysis of the laws of nature has any interest in why we are so keen to find them. Stoics 'live by nature'. |
| 114 | p.85 | 14827 | The Greeks saw the gods not as their masters, but as idealised versions of themselves |
| Full Idea: The Greeks did not see the Homeric gods above them as masters and themselves below them as servants, as did the Jews. They saw, as it were, only the reflection of the most successful specimens of their own caste - an ideal, not a contrast. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 114) |
| 115 | p.86 | 14828 | Religion is tempting if your life is boring, but you can't therefore impose it on the busy people |
| Full Idea: People who think their daily lives too empty and monotonous easily become religious: this is understandable and forgivable; however, they have no right to demand religiosity from those whose daily life does not pass in emptiness and monotony. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 115) | |||
| A reaction: Well wicked, that Nietzsche. Richard Dawkins and the hated new atheists are a right bunch of wimps in comparison. |
| 131 | p.90 | 14830 | Intuition only recognises what is possible, not what exists or is certain |
| Full Idea: 'To intuit' does not mean to recognise the existence of a thing to any extent, but rather to hold it to be possible, in that one wishes or fears it. 'Intuition' takes us not one step farther into the land of certainty. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 131) | |||
| A reaction: I like this remark. I am sympathetic to the view that the actual world has modal properties (in opposition to Sider, for example). To apprehend dispositions is precisely to apprehend possibilities. Intuition is a thousand interwoven inductions. |
| 133 | p.92 | 14831 | No one has ever done anything that was entirely for other people |
| Full Idea: Never has a man done anything that was only for others and without any personal motivation. …How could the ego act without ego? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 133) | |||
| A reaction: This is only a denial of the purest of 'pure' altruism. It is hard to imagine anyone performing an altruistic action which permanently shamed the reputationof its performer - though it might be possible in a nicely contrived fiction. |
| 137 | p.95 | 14832 | The Sermon on the Mount is vanity - praying to one part of oneself, and demonising the rest |
| Full Idea: This shattering of oneself, this scorn of one's own nature, is actually a high degree of vanity. The whole morality of the Sermon on the Mount belongs here; in ascetic morality man prays to one part of himself as a god, and has to diabolify the rest. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 137) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be the core of Nietzsche's objection to Christian teaching - that it doesn't provide a direction of life for the whole human being. The modern rejection of religions agrees with Nietzsche, especially in disputes over the place of sex. |
| 169 | p.115 | 14833 | Comedy is a transition from fear to exuberance |
| Full Idea: The transition from momentary fear to short-lived exuberance is called the 'comic' | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 169) |
| 200 | p.123 | 14834 | Teachers only gather knowledge for their pupils, and can't be serious about themselves |
| Full Idea: A teacher is incapable of doing anything of his own for his own good. He always thinks of the good of his pupils, and all new knowledge gladdens him only to the extent that he can teach it. He is a thoroughfare for learning, and has lost seriousness. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 200) | |||
| A reaction: Oh dear. I look in the mirror. Do I only delight in finding all these quotations so that I can stick them in the database and pass them on to someone else? Are they actually impingeing on my life? Could I meet an idea that made me abandon this project? |
| 211 | p.126 | 14835 | Artists are not especially passionate, but they pretend to be |
| Full Idea: Artists are by no means people of great passion, but they often pretend to be. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 211) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably people can gradually become what they consistently pretend to be. |
| 229 | p.142 | 14836 | People will enthusiastically pursue an unwanted war, once sacrifices have been made |
| Full Idea: All things for which we have made sacrifices are in the right. This explains why, just as soon as sacrifices are made, people continue with enthusiasm a war that was begun against their wishes. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 229) |
| 235 | p.145 | 14838 | The state aims to protect individuals from one another |
| Full Idea: The state is a clever institution for protecting individuals from one another. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 235) | |||
| A reaction: This is Nietzsche allying with Hobbes, and presumably aiming this remark at Hegel. |
| 235 | p.145 | 14837 | Christ seems warm hearted, and suppressed intellect in favour of the intellectually weak |
| Full Idea: Christ, whom we like to imagine as having the warmest of hearts, furthered men's stupidity, took the side of the intellectually weak, and kept the greatest intellect from being produced: and this was consistent. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 235) | |||
| A reaction: Thomas Aquinas was a stupendous intellect. The surest way to be swept forward on a wave of popularity is to find some reason why the uneducated are superior to the educated. |
| 242 | p.149 | 14839 | Interest in education gains strength when we lose interest in God |
| Full Idea: Interest in education will gain great strength only at the moment when belief in a God and his loving care is given up. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 242) | |||
| A reaction: This remark may well sum up the motivation of my entire life. What effect would it have had if I had read it when I was twenty? |
| 368 | p.189 | 14841 | Many people are better at having good friends than being a good friend |
| Full Idea: In many people the gift of having good friends is much greater than the gift of being a good friend. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 368) |
| 371 | p.190 | 14842 | Why are the strong tastes of other people so contagious? |
| Full Idea: Why are likes and dislikes so contagious that one can scarcely live in proximity to a person of strong sensibilities without being filled like a vessel with pros and cons? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 371) | |||
| A reaction: I was on the receiving end of this when young, and I think it influenced me to propound stronger views about things than I could ever justify, since my natural disposition is to be cautious about all views. Nice question. Why? |
| 390 | p.196 | 14843 | Women can be friends with men, but only some physical antipathy will maintain it |
| Full Idea: Women can very well enter into a friendship with a man, but to maintain it - a little physical antipathy must help out. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 390) |
| 391 | p.197 | 14844 | People do not experience boredom if they have never learned to work properly |
| Full Idea: Many people, especially women, do not experience boredom, because they have never learned to work properly. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 391) | |||
| A reaction: It certainly seems right that boredom is a response to expectations and past habits. Life in a medieval village looks like boredom verging on torture for your busy modern urban sophisticate, but I daresay it was quite absorbing. |
| 409 | p.199 | 14845 | Don't crush girls with dull Gymnasium education, the way we have crushed boys! |
| Full Idea: For heaven's sake, do not pass our Gymnasium education on to girls too! For it often turns witty, inquisitive, fiery youths - into copies of their teachers! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 409) |
| 438 | p.210 | 14846 | If we want the good life for the greatest number, we must let them decide on the good life |
| Full Idea: If the business of politics is to make life tolerable for the greatest number, this greatest number may also determine what they understand by a tolerable life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 438) |
| 459 | p.219 | 14847 | Laws that are well thought out, or laws that are easy to understand? |
| Full Idea: Lawyers argue whether that law which is most thoroughly thought out, or that which is easiest to understand, should prevail in a people. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 459) | |||
| A reaction: Our system of speed limits is radically simplified, to save money on road signs, and facilitate enforcement. But then its inflexibility brings it into disrepute. |
| 467 | p.222 | 14848 | Education in large states is mediocre, like cooking in large kitchens |
| Full Idea: The educational system in large states will always be mediocre at best, for the same reason that the cooking in large kitchens is at best mediocre. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 467) | |||
| A reaction: I wish he had said what that 'same reason' is. Something to do with too many cooks, I suppose. Nothing seems harder than reaching a wide concensus on how the young should be educated. Like interior design by a committee. |
| 471 | p.222 | 14849 | We can only achieve happy moments, not happy eras |
| Full Idea: The destiny of men is designed for happy moments (every life has those), but not for happy eras. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 471) | |||
| A reaction: The vicissitudes of life (my favourite word!) are such that even the most serene and well-adjusted person is going to be perturbed on several days of the week, even if only by the unhappiness of the people around them. |
| 475 | p.228 | 14850 | Christ was the noblest human being |
| Full Idea: Christ was the noblest human being. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 475) | |||
| A reaction: That one will come as a surprise to those who only know of Nietzsche's religion that 'God is dead'! |
| 477 | p.230 | 14852 | Culture cannot do without passions and vices |
| Full Idea: Culture absolutely cannot do without passions, vices and acts of malice. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 477) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure how you test the truth of that aphorism, given that humanity is perpetually doomed to live with such things. If those qualities disappeared, I suppose we would drift apart. We are 'dependent' beings, as MacIntyre says. |
| 483 | p.234 | 24075 | Convictions, more than lies, are the great enemy of truth |
| Full Idea: Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 483) | |||
| A reaction: Love this one. Especially in western democracies in the 2020s. If we value truth, we must be fallibilists. |
| 506 | p.237 | 14853 | Truth finds fewest champions not when it is dangerous, but when it is boring |
| Full Idea: The champions of truth are hardest to find, not when it is dangerous to tell it, but rather when it is boring. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 506) |
| 518 | p.238 | 14854 | Deep thinkers know that they are always wrong |
| Full Idea: Whoever thinks more deeply knows that he is always wrong, whatever his acts and judgments. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 518) |
| 603 | p.252 | 14855 | Simultaneous love and respect are impossible; love has no separation or rank, but respect admits power |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to be loved and respected by the same person. For the man who respects another acknowledges his power; his condition is one of awe. But love acknowledges no power, nothing that separates, differentiates, ranks higher or subordinates. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 603) |
| 608 | p.253 | 14856 | Our judgment seems to cause our nature, but actually judgment arises from our nature |
| Full Idea: It seems that our thinking and judging are to be made the cause of our nature after the fact, but actually our nature causes us to think and judge one way or the other. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 608) |
| 609 | p.253 | 14857 | The highest wisdom has the guise of simplicity |
| Full Idea: Truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 609) |
| 630 | p.261 | 14858 | Being certain presumes that there are absolute truths, and means of arriving at them |
| Full Idea: Conviction is the belief that in some point of knowledge one possesses absolute truth. Such a belief presumes, then, that absolute truths exists; likewise, that the perfect methods for arriving at them have been found. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 630) |
| 1880 | The Wanderer and his Shadow |
| §204 | p.183 | 4422 | The end need not be the goal, as in the playing of a melody (and yet it must be completed) |
| Full Idea: Not every end is the goal; the end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Wanderer and his Shadow [1880], §204) | |||
| A reaction: A nice message for Aristotle, that there is no simple separation of ends and means. |
| 1881 | Dawn (Daybreak) |
| Pref 3 | p.3 | 20229 | No authority ever willingly accepts criticism |
| Full Idea: As long as the world has existed, no authority has ever willingly permitted itself to become the object of critique. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], Pref 3) | |||
| A reaction: A political remark, but it leads into speaking of conventional morality as just such an authority. Nowadays teachers have feedback forms, and leaders have to endure party conferences. But on the whole it remains true. |
| Pref 3 | p.3 | 20230 | The very idea of a critique of morality is regarded as immoral! |
| Full Idea: Even to think of criticising morality, to consider morality as a problem, as problematic: what? was that not - is that not - immoral? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], Pref 3) | |||
| A reaction: Offering critiques of the value of morality and of truth are perhaps Nietzsche's greatest achievements. |
| §507 | p.251 | 20380 | Why should truth be omnipotent? It is enough that it is very powerful |
| Full Idea: I have no idea why the dictatorship and omnipotence of truth would be desirable; it's sufficient for me that it has great power. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], §507) | |||
| A reaction: I once heard a philosopher (at Essex University) assert that truth is the only value, which was interesting. Nietzsche actually wants to endorse the value of lies and deceptions, like the 'noble lie' in Plato's Republic. |
| 012 | p.14 | 20231 | People used to think that outcomes were from God, rather than consequences of acts |
| Full Idea: People used to believe that the outcome of an action was not a consequence, but an independent, supplemental ingredient, namely God's. Is a greater confusion conceivable? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 012) | |||
| A reaction: Not sure how well documented or accurate this is, but Nietzsche was a great scholar, and it would explain the fatalism that runs through many older forms of society. |
| 013 | p.14 | 20233 | Punishment has distorted the pure innocence of the contingency of outcomes |
| Full Idea: With this infamous art of interpreting the concept of punishment, people have robbed of its innocence the whole, pure contingency of events. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 013) | |||
| A reaction: What a wonderfully subtle observation about moral luck! That whole problem is driven by the issue of whether the agent should be punished. When a chain of errors leads to disaster, we may see many innocent people doing a collective evil. |
| 013 | p.14 | 20232 | Get rid of the idea of punishment! It is a noxious weed! |
| Full Idea: People of diligence and goodwill, lend a hand in the one work of eradicating from the face of the earth the concept of punishment, which has overrun the whole world! There is no more noxious weed! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 013) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche never tried his hand at school teaching or parenting or running a youth club. But I still love this idea. In really good families I suspect that punishment is almost unknown. |
| 019 | p.20 | 20234 | Morality prevents us from developing better customs |
| Full Idea: Morality acts to prevent the rise of new and better mores: it stupefies. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 019) | |||
| A reaction: Note that he wants 'better' customs, and not just different ones. So the deep question concerns the criteria for why some customs are better. He seems to want us to fulfil our natures more completely. Arts, sciences, great deeds... |
| 026 | p.24 | 20235 | Like animals, we seek truth because we want safety |
| Full Idea: Even that nose for truth, which is, at bottom, the nose for safety, human beings have in common with animals. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 026) | |||
| A reaction: After Darwin, Nietzsche immediately saw that we need an account of humanity which is continuous with animals. The first step to physical security is ascertaining the physical facts. This idea rings true. |
| 027 | p.24 | 20236 | Marriage upholds the idea that love, though a passion, can endure |
| Full Idea: The institution of marriage stubbornly upholds the belief that love, though a passion, is, as such, capable of duration. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 027) | |||
| A reaction: No wonder Nietzsche never married. Women must have been terrified of him, when he came out with this sort of remark. I doubt whether many couples who are celebrating their golden wedding would agree with him. [1/5/2017] |
| 034 | p.29 | 20237 | Moral feelings are entirely different from the moral concepts used to judge actions |
| Full Idea: The history of moral feeling is completely different from the history of moral concepts. The former are powerful before, the latter especially after an action in view of the compulsion to pronounce upon it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 034) | |||
| A reaction: I think he places the feelings in our animal origins, and the concepts in rather unnatural cultures. |
| 035 | p.30 | 20238 | Treating morality as feelings is just obeying your ancestors |
| Full Idea: To trust your feelings - that means obeying your grandfather and your grandmother and their grandparents more than the gods in us: our reason and our experience. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 035) | |||
| A reaction: He says prior to this that feelings are just an inheritance, not our true natures. Stoics said 'live according to nature', by which they meant 'live by reason', because that is our true nature. |
| 038 | p.32 | 20240 | The Jews treated great anger as holy, and were in awe of those who expressed it |
| Full Idea: The Jews felt differently about wrath than we do and decreed it holy; in return, they, as a people, viewed the foreboding majesty of the individual with whom wrath showed itself connected, at a height at which a European is incapable of imagining. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 038) | |||
| A reaction: If you thought wrath was really wonderful then presumably you would aspire to partake of it, but I see no signs of the Jews having been an especially wrathful people. It sounds like the tantrums of Tudor monarchs, which was their royal privilege. |
| 044 | p.36 | 20241 | Enquirers think finding our origin is salvation, but it turns out to be dull |
| Full Idea: Investigators of knowledge ...have regularly presupposed that the salvation of humanity depended on insight into the origin of things. ...but with insight into origin comes the increasing insignificance of origin. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 044) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds like the etymological fallacy, of thinking that the origin of a word gives you a true grasp of its meaning. |
| 048 | p.38 | 20242 | Things are the boundaries of humanity, so all things must be known, for self-knowledge |
| Full Idea: Only when the human being has finally attained knowledge of all things will he have known himself. For things are merely the boundaries of the human being. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 048) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather externalist view of the mind. If philosophy aims to disentangle mind from world then good knowledge of the world seems to be required. |
| 049 | p.38 | 20243 | Human beings are not majestic, either through divine origins, or through grand aims |
| Full Idea: Formerly one tried to get a feel for the majesty of human beings by pointing backward toward their divine descent: this has now become a forbidden path. ...So now the path humanity pursues is proof of its majesty. Alas, this too leads nowhere! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 049) | |||
| A reaction: I love the breadth of Nietzsche's vision, both across history, and in the great scheme. He goes on to say that we are no more a 'higher order' than ants and earwigs. |
| 058 | p.43 | 20244 | Christianity replaces rational philosophical virtues with great passions focused on God |
| Full Idea: Christianity disallows all moral value to the virtue of philosophers - the triumph of reason over affects - and demands that affects reveal themselves in splendour, as love of God, fear before God, fanatical faith in God, and blindest hope in God. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 058) | |||
| A reaction: Faith, hope and charity are the three great Christian virtues that were added to the four cardinal virtues of the Greeks. |
| 059 | p.43 | 20245 | Christianity hoped for a short cut to perfection, that skipped the hard labour of morality |
| Full Idea: You can say what you like: Christianity wanted to liberate humanity from the burden of the demands of morality by pointing out a shorter way to perfection, or so it believed. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 059) | |||
| A reaction: This conjures up Graham Greene's Catholic heroes, who wallow in sin, but hope for salvation at the last moment. |
| 063 | p.46 | 20246 | If you feel to others as they feel to themselves, you must hate a self-hater |
| Full Idea: Supposing we felt toward someone else as that person feels about himself, then we would have to hate him if he (like Pascal) found himself hateful. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 063) | |||
| A reaction: And how does the Golden Rule work if the other people feel suicidal (as groups sometimes do)? |
| 070 | p.51 | 20247 | Christianity was successful because of its heathen rituals |
| Full Idea: Not what is Christian in it, rather the universal heathenism of its rituals is the reason for the propogation of this world religion. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 070) | |||
| A reaction: I'm afraid I think this is right. I grew up bewildered by the lack of content in the rituals of church services. Even austere protestants manage to sing and recite. Maybe philosophies should do this - wanted: new Cartesian and Kantian rituals! |
| 105 | p.72 | 20248 | People do nothing for their real ego, but only for a phantom ego created by other people |
| Full Idea: Whatever they say about their 'egotism', people nevertheless do nothing their whole life long for their ego, but instead for the phantom ego that has formed in the heads around them and been communicated to them. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 105) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche has a vision of true devotion to the ego as healthy, and so (I would say) does Aristotle, though the two might disagree about the details. I want to live among people who work on themselves, not those who always sacrifice themselves. |
| 119 | p.88 | 20249 | Our knowledge of the many drives that constitute us is hopelessly incomplete |
| Full Idea: No matter how hard a person struggles for self-knowledge, nothing can be more incomplete than the image of all the drives taken together than constitute his being. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 119) | |||
| A reaction: This gives the concept of personal identity that arises from the (later) doctrine of the 'will to power'. It is a bundle view of the self, but a bundle of drives rather than of percepts and mental events. His view is close to Hume's. |
| 126 | p.93 | 20250 | We may be unable to remember, but we may never actually forget |
| Full Idea: It has yet to be proven that there is such a thing as forgetting; all we know is that the act of remembering is not within our power. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 126) | |||
| A reaction: There is some evidence for this. We forget innumerable people, but then find that we recognise them if we meet them many years later. Anecdotes report very ancient memories suddenly surfacing. |
| 127 | p.94 | 20251 | Actions done for a purpose are least understood, because we complacently think it's obvious |
| Full Idea: Of all actions, the ones least understood are those undertaken for a purpose, no doubt because they have always passed for the most intelligible and are to our way of thinking the most commonplace. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 127) | |||
| A reaction: You feel that Nietzsche is right about our stupendous lack of of self-knowledge, but then a bit of a panic ensues, because it is not clear what you are supposed to do about anything, particularly if we don't know why anyone else does anything. |
| 151 | p.116 | 20252 | Marriage is too serious to be permitted for people in love! |
| Full Idea: Lovers' vows ought to be publicly declared invalid and marriage denied the pair: and indeed precisely because one ought to take marriage unspeakably more seriously! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 151) | |||
| A reaction: Sounds like the traditional aristocratic attitude to marriage, so the idea suits Nietzsche. I think that nowadays it is much wiser to be base proposal of marriage on friendship than on love. You are choosing a life-long friend, not someone to adore. |
| 180 | p.130 | 20253 | Modern wars arise from the study of history |
| Full Idea: The great wars of our day are the effects of the study of history. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 180) | |||
| A reaction: The Prussians reacted to Napoleon. The Nazis reacted to Versailles. But now the study of history reveals to us dreadful wars based on simplistic accounts of history. Be wise about history, not ignorant of it. |
| 181 | p.130 | 20254 | People govern for the pleasure of it, or just to avoid being governed |
| Full Idea: Some govern out of pleasure in governing, others in order not to be governed - to the latter, governing is merely the lesser of two evils. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 181) | |||
| A reaction: Our current society is full of self-employed people whose major motivation is to avoid being employees. |
| 197 | p.142 | 20255 | Early 19th century German philosophers enjoyed concepts, rather than scientific explanations |
| Full Idea: Early 19th century German philosophers retreated to the first and oldest level of speculation, for, like the thinkers of dreamy ages, they found satisfaction in concepts rather than in explanations - they resuscitated a prescientific type of philosophy. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 197) | |||
| A reaction: I have a suspicion that this may still apply to 'continental philosophy'. Personally I love explanations, which lead to understanding. But not all explanations are scientific. |
| 257 | p.176 | 20256 | What we think is totally dictated by the language available to express it |
| Full Idea: We have at every moment only that very thought for which we have ready to hand the words that are roughly capable of expressing it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 257) | |||
| A reaction: This is a highly influential idea, even if this expression of it is little known. Everyone who places language at the centre of philosophy believes something like this. It is a very striking thought, and must certainly contain considerable truth. |
| 277 | p.182 | 20257 | Cool courage and feverish bravery have one name, but are two very different virtues |
| Full Idea: Courage as cold bravery and impeturbability, and courage as feverish, half-blind bravura - one calls both of these things by the same name! How different are the cold virtues from the warm ones! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 277) | |||
| A reaction: How few philosophers are capable of making a subtle but accurate observation like this! How many other virtues should be subdivided? |
| 285 | p.184 | 20258 | Most people treat knowledge as a private possession |
| Full Idea: Most people take a thing they know under their protection, as if knowing it turned it into their possession. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 285) | |||
| A reaction: A typically wicked and subtle remark. This presumably makes knowledge part of the will to power, with which Francis Bacon would presumably agree. |
| 297 | p.187 | 20259 | Teach youth to respect people who differ with them, not people who agree with them |
| Full Idea: The surest way to ruin a youth is by teaching him to respect those who think like him more highly than those who think differently. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 297) | |||
| A reaction: On the whole I prefer to read the philosophers who seem to be on my side, because I am trying to strengthen my explanation of the world, and opponents aren't much help. I do read opponents, if they explicitly challenge what I defend. |
| 298 | p.188 | 20260 | Carlyle spent his life vainly trying to make reason appear romantic |
| Full Idea: Thomas Carlyle spent a long life trying to make reason romantic to his fellow Englishmen: to no avail! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 298) | |||
| A reaction: An interesting gloss on the shift from the Enlightenment to the Romantic era. Presumably the idea of the 'genius' and the 'hero' are the means whereby Carlyle hoped to achive this. |
| 307 | p.190 | 20261 | History does not concern what really happened, but supposed events, which have all the influence |
| Full Idea: The writer of history deals not with what really happened but merely with supposed events, for only the latter have had an effect. ...All historians speak of things that have never existed except in imagination. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 307) | |||
| A reaction: This seems blatantly true, and is most obvious in the case of forged documents which have been hugely influential. Erroneous conspiracy theories are another example. (Note: only scorn conspiracy theories if you think conspiracies never happen!). |
| 308 | p.191 | 20262 | Don't use wisdom in order to become clever! |
| Full Idea: One ought not to use one's wisdom to become clever! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 308) | |||
| A reaction: And I would add 'don't think that being clever makes you wise'. Nietzsche, as always, is subtler than me (which is why I read him a lot). Presumably wisdom is broad, and cleverness is focused. Will becoming clever spoil someone's wisdom? |
| 309 | p.191 | 20263 | Fear reveals the natures of other people much more clearly than love does |
| Full Idea: Fear has furthered the universal knowledge of humanity more than love, for fear wants to discern who the other person is, what he can do and what he wants. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 309) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche had it in for love at this stage in his career. This remark strikes me as brilliantly accurate. |
| 311 | p.191 | 20264 | The easy and graceful aspects of a person are called 'soul', and inner awkwardness is called 'soulless' |
| Full Idea: The sum of inner movements that are easy for a person and that he consequently performs happily and with grace is called his 'soul'; - if inner movements obviously cause him difficulty and effort, he is considered soulless. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 311) | |||
| A reaction: 'Soulless' is usually applied to people deficient in some sort of empathic feeling, or with an inability to recognise grandeur. It seems to imply that people who experience inner torture are soulless, but romantics see them as very soulful. |
| 318 | p.193 | 20265 | The desire for a complete system requires making the weak parts look equal to the rest |
| Full Idea: There is playacting going on among systematisers: inasmuch as they want to make the system whole and round off the horizon around it, they must attempt to have their weaker qualities appear in the same style as their strong ones. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 318) | |||
| A reaction: Filed under 'rationalism', because they are the notorious system builders, but the same tendency and problem can be seen to some extent among empiricsts who seek completeness. David Lewis, perhaps. |
| 330 | p.198 | 20266 | It is essential that wise people learn to express their wisdom, possibly even as foolishness |
| Full Idea: It is not yet enough to prove a thing, one must seduce people to accept it or raise them up to it. That is why a knowledgeable person ought to learn to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like foolishness. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 330) | |||
| A reaction: Kant comes to mind. He has needed endless exegesis by people who write better than him. Have there been even greater philosophers who couldn't express their wisdom at all? Cratylus, perhaps! |
| 339 | p.200 | 20267 | Seeing duty as a burden makes it a bit cruel, and it can thus never become a habit |
| Full Idea: To require that duty always be somewhat burdensome - as Kant does - amounts to acquiring that it never become habit and custom: in this requirement there linger a tiny remnant of ascetic cruelty. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 339) | |||
| A reaction: Habit, of course, is the ideal of Aristotelian virtue. |
| 349 | p.202 | 20268 | Most dying people have probably lost more important things than what they are about to lose |
| Full Idea: The act of dying is not as significant as the universal awe of it would have us believe, and the dying person has probably lost more important things in life than he is now about to lose. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 349) | |||
| A reaction: He says this is a thought about death which we tend to repress. It would depend on the life, I should think, but it is probably right in very many cases. |
| 417 | p.217 | 20269 | 'I believe because it is absurd' - but how about 'I believe because I am absurd' |
| Full Idea: Many people have achieved the humility that says: 'I believe because it is absurd', and have sacrificed their reason for it. But no one, as far as I know, has achieved the humility, which is only one step further, of 'I believe because I am absurd'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 417) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche gives the Latin: 'credo quia absurdum est' (Tertullian), and 'credo quia absurdus sum'. It may look like an insulting remark from Nietzsche, but it is actually in tune with the spirit of the original. |
| 432 | p.224 | 20270 | There is no one scientific method; we must try many approaches, and many emotions |
| Full Idea: There is no one and only scientific method that leads to knowledge. We must proceed experimentally with things, be sometimes angry, sometimes affectionate towards them, and allow justice, passion, and coldness to follow one upon another. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 432) | |||
| A reaction: Alexander Bird says the same thing in our time. I agree, but I think there is a core of controlled conditions and peer review. |
| 433 | p.225 | 20271 | Beauty in art is the imitation of happiness |
| Full Idea: By beauty in art one always understands imitation of happiness. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 433) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure how one goes about imitating happiness. One can replicate things that make us happy, like a nice landscape. But some beauty in art is also novel, and produces a new sort of happiness. Kandinsky. |
| 456 | p.233 | 20272 | Honesty is a new young virtue, and we can promote it, or not |
| Full Idea: Among neither the Socratic nor the Christian virtues does honesty appear: it is one of the youngest virtues, still quite immature. ...We can advance it or retard it, as we see fit. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 456) | |||
| A reaction: I associate the virtue of honesty with the cult of sincerity of feelings which arose in the romantic movement. |
| 534 | p.259 | 20273 | The French Revolution gave trusting Europe the false delusion of instant recovery |
| Full Idea: The 'Great Revolution' [in France] was nothing more than a pathetic and bloody quackery, which understood how, through sudden crises, to supply a trusting Europe with the sudden hope of recovery. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 534) | |||
| A reaction: Whenever a new leader comes into power there is the same honeymoon period, where dreams of salvation have a moment in the sun. |
| 556 | p.276 | 20274 | The cardinal virtues want us to be honest, brave, magnanimous and polite |
| Full Idea: Honest towards ourselves and whatever else is our friend; courageous toward the enemy; magnanimous toward the defeated; polite - always. This is how the four cardinal virtues want us to be. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 556) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to be Nietzsche genuinely asserting his four cardinal virtues, rather than being ironic. He certainly asserts politeness as the fourth virtue earlier in the book. Cf a different list in Idea 20382 |
| 560 | p.277 | 20275 | Most people think they are already complete, but we can cultivate ourselves |
| Full Idea: We are free to handle and cultivate our drives like a gardener ...but how many people know we are free to do this? Don't most people believe in themselves as completed, full grown up facts? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 560) | |||
| A reaction: I see Nietzsche as an existentialist philosopher. He is much more than that, but this quotation endorses what I take to be the central idea of existentialism. |
| 560 | p.561 | 20131 | We can cultivate our drives, of anger, pity, curiosity, vanity, like a gardener, with good or bad taste |
| Full Idea: One can dispose of one's drives like a gardener and, though few know it, cultivate the shoots of anger, pity, curiosity, vanity as productively and profitably as a beautiful fruit tree on a trellis; one can do it with the good or bad taste of a gardener. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Dawn (Daybreak) [1881], 560) | |||
| A reaction: This sort of existentialism I find very appealing. You take what you are given, the cards you are dealt, and try to make something nice out of it. This is quite different from the crazy freedom of later existentialists. |
| 1882 | Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 |
| 1[003] | p.3 | 24096 | Unlike time, space is subjective. Empty space was assumed, but it doesn't exist |
| Full Idea: Space, like matter, is a subjective form. Time is not. Space first emerged through the assumption of empty space. This doesn't exist. Force is everything. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 1[003]) | |||
| A reaction: I would think modern physics endorses his opinion of space. The original atomists proposed a 'void', to prevent traffic jams of atoms. Now we see space as fields, so it is never empty. |
| 11[013] | p.309 | 24084 | Seeing with other eyes is more egoism, but exploring other perspectives leads to objectivity |
| Full Idea: Wanting to know things as they are - that alone is the good inclination: not seeing ..with other eyes; that would be merely a change of place of egoistic seeing. …Practise at seeing with other eyes, and without human relationships, hence objectively! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[013]) | |||
| A reaction: That Nietzsche thinks we should try to see things objectively will come as a bit of a shock to those who have him catalogued among the relativists. It's clear from other writings that he thinks (rightly) that perfect objectivity is unattainable. |
| 11[037] | p.317 | 24085 | For absolute morality a goal for mankind is needed |
| Full Idea: I deny absolute morality because I do not know an absolute goal of mankind. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[037]) | |||
| A reaction: Christianity dreams of union of souls with God (clustering around God like goldfish to food, according to Dante). That is an absolute goal, justifying an absolute morality. If Aristotelians could identify human nature, its flourishing might be absolute. |
| 11[044] | p.320 | 24086 | The goal is to settle human beings, like other animals, but humans are still changeable |
| Full Idea: Obviously the goal is to make human beings as steady and firm as most animal species; they have adapted to the conditions of the earth etc. and do not change essentially. The human being is still changeable - is still becoming. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[044]) | |||
| A reaction: I favour an Aristotelian view, based on the flourishing of human nature, but this thought obviously challenges such a view. Great changes to a culture can make some difference to the apparent nature of people. |
| 11[049] | p.321 | 24087 | People who miss beauty seek the sublime, where even the ugly shows its 'beauty' |
| Full Idea: Whoever does to achieve the beautiful seeks the wildly sublime, because there even the ugly can show its 'beauty'. Likewise we seek the wildly sublime morality. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[049]) | |||
| A reaction: Is the 'we' here Nietzsche, or the herd? The former, I guess, since some the values he likes seem rather ugly to me. He is a fan of war, for example. I'm guessing that massive destruction is sublime but ugly. |
| 11[159] | p.358 | 24088 | See our present lives as eternal! Religions see it as fleeting, and aim at some different life |
| Full Idea: Let us press the image of eternity on our life! This thought contains more than all religions that despise this life as fleeting and taught us to look toward an unspecified different life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[159]) | |||
| A reaction: This is the best statement of the idea of eternal recurrence I have so far found. His ideal is to design a life for ourselves which we would be happy to see endlessly repeated. A lot of thought would have to go into that! |
| 11[329] | p.415 | 24089 | Essences are fictions needed for beings who represent things |
| Full Idea: The true essence of things is a fiction of representing being, without which being is unable to represent. 11[330] Thinking must assert substance and identity because a knowing of complete flux is impossible. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[329]) | |||
| A reaction: I have defended (in my PhD) the thesis that the concept of essence is required for explanation. Do animals need the concept of essence in order to represent? I think people and animals ascribe essential natures to most things. |
| 12[1]123 | p.352 | 24115 | There is no proof that we forget things - only that we can't recall |
| Full Idea: That forgetting exists has never yet been demonstrated, but only that many things do not occur to us when we want them to. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[1]123) | |||
| A reaction: There is now quite a lot of evidence that there innumerable memories buried in that mind that we seem unable to directly recall. He is right that we can hardly demonstrate this negative fact. |
| 12[35] | p.428 | 24090 | Our inclinations would not conflict if we were a unity; we imagine unity for our multiplicity |
| Full Idea: How is it that we satisfy our stronger inclinations at the expense of our weaker inclinations? - In itself, if we were a unity, this split could not exist. In fact we are a multiplicity that has imagined a unity for itself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[35]) | |||
| A reaction: Plato had the same thought, but stopped at three parts, rather than a multiplicity. What Nietzsche fails to say, I think, is that this 'imagined' unity of the mind is not optional, and obviously has a real link to the one body and the one life. |
| 12[38] | p.428 | 24091 | The sublimity of nature which dwarfs us was a human creation |
| Full Idea: This beauty and sublimity of nature, before which every human being seems small, was first imposed on nature by us. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[38]) | |||
| A reaction: I was struck when I was 10 with how indifferent to a landscape I was, when my mother told me it was 'beautiful'. Five years later I saw it differently. I assume nature is not intrinsically sublime. Dwarfed by our own concept is a bit odd. |
| 12[43] | p.367 | 24116 | Justice says people are not equal, and should become increasingly unequal |
| Full Idea: People are not equal: thus speaks justice. …Humans should keep becoming ever more unequal. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[43]) | |||
| A reaction: Important to add a little dash of Nietzsche to the widespread modern mantras about equality. We must at least question the extent to which equality should be our aim. (Personally I am an egalitarian liberal). |
| 12[86] | p.436 | 24092 | I tell the truth, even if it is repulsive |
| Full Idea: As a man I tell the truth, even the repulsive ones. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 12[86]) | |||
| A reaction: I wonder if even Nietzsche had his limits. He is quite coy about sexual matters, for example, before Freud and various sexual revolutions. To ruthlessly tell difficult truths strikes me as a scientific approach to the world. |
| 13[19] | p.463 | 24093 | We can aspire to greatness by creating new functions for ourselves |
| Full Idea: To see the new greatness not above oneself, not outside oneself, but to make a new function from it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 13[19]) | |||
| A reaction: Thus we might combine the Aristotelian and the existentialist views! Do we discover our function or invent it? Anyone who acquires an expertise is creating a new function for themselves, presumably with a high value. |
| 14[03] | p.429 | 24117 | We need lower and higher drives, but they must be under firm control |
| Full Idea: All lower drives must be present and have fresh force if the highest ones want to exist and exist in abundance: but control of the whole must be in firm hands! otherwise the danger is too great. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 14[03]) | |||
| A reaction: This is unusual, because he speaks of the Self as little more than the currently dominant drive, but here he postulates a controller of the drives, a ringmaster. A-krasia means lack of control. Nietzsche wants en-krateia. |
| 15[11] | p.478 | 24094 | Humans are vividly aware of short-term effects, and almost ignorant of the long-term ones |
| Full Idea: How weakly human beings feel responsible for their indirect and distant effects! And how cruelly and exaggeratedly the closest effect that we exert pounces on us - the effect we see, for which our myopic vision is still just sharp enough! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[11]) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as both accurate and important, because consequentialist ethics is largely committed to judging by a very distorted image of their own objective. |
| 15[41] | p.488 | 24095 | Our growth is too subtle to perceive, and long events are too slow for us to grasp |
| Full Idea: The slowness of the events in the history of human beings is not suited to the human sense of time - and the subtlety and smallness of all growth defies human vision. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 15[41]) | |||
| A reaction: The only way we can study history is by 'periods'. It is as if English history has its slate wiped clean in 1066, 1485, 1603 and 1689. All historians know that the reality of it all is totally beyond our grasp. |
| 16[17] | p.455 | 24118 | Do away with punishment. Counter-retribution is as bad as the crime |
| Full Idea: My programme: do away with punishment: for us. Counter-retribution is nonsense. (If something is evil, then whoever performs the counter-retribution is certainly committing the same evil). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 16[17]) | |||
| A reaction: Note that he seems to have a perfectly orthodox concept of 'evil' here. I don't think he ever suggested a strategy to replace punishment. |
| 20[02] | p.532 | 24119 | The eternal return of wastefulness is a terrible thought |
| Full Idea: The most terrible thought of an eternal return of wastefulness. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 20[02]) | |||
| A reaction: This illuminates quite well his notion of eternal recurrence. Not only what you would do in an eternally recurring life, but what you would avoid. |
| 22[01] | p.547 | 24120 | Great orators lead their arguments, rather than following them |
| Full Idea: For me there are no true orators and super-orators unless they can convince the arguments themselves to run after them. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 22[01]) | |||
| A reaction: I translate this as great orators generating the mere appearance of good arguments. Both reason and feeling must be irrationally swept along. Nice. |
| 24[14] | p.590 | 24122 | Life is forces conjoined by nutrition, to produce resistance, arrangement and value |
| Full Idea: A multiplicity of forces, conjoined through a common nutritive process, is what we call 'life'. All so-called feeling, representing, thinking is part of this nutritive process to enable resistance to other forces, and arrangement, and an evaluation. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[14]) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed at the end] Since no one else seems able to define life, this is quite a good attempt. Life is certainly a sort of unification of active energies, which than share goals. |
| 24[28] | p.599 | 24123 | My eternal recurrence is opposed to feeling fragmented and imperfect |
| Full Idea: I held up eternal recurrence against the numbing feeling of general disintegration and imperfection. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[28]) | |||
| A reaction: I've heard people say that they think Nietzsche was a nihilist. This is nonsense. His whole career was an opposition to nihilism. His excitement over the idea of recurrence is that he sees a real answer to nihilism. You have to value a recurring life. |
| 3[296] | p.75 | 24097 | The pragmatics of language is more comprehensible than the meaning |
| Full Idea: The most comprehensible part of language is not the word itself, but rather tone, force, modulation, tempo, with which a series of words is spoken. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[296]) | |||
| A reaction: He exaggerates. If you watch someone talking vociferously in an unknown foreign language, the feeling of the exchange is obvious, but the content is quite unknown. I see his point that we underestimate body language etc. |
| 3[312] | p.77 | 24098 | Reasons that justify punishment can also justify the crime |
| Full Idea: The reasons used to justify the punishment for a crime can also be used to justify the crime. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 3[312]) | |||
| A reaction: A splendid observation, even if it is not wholly true. The justification of capital punishment appeals in some way to the whole of society, but a murderer could hardly do that. |
| 34[01] | p.583 | 24121 | Greeks might see modern analysis of what is human as impious |
| Full Idea: Perhaps a Greek would experience the way we have delved deeply in uncovering what is human to be an impiety against nature, a shameless act. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 34[01]) | |||
| A reaction: Three instances come to mind: Vesalius, Kant and Darwin. That is, anatomical dissection, deep and critical introspection, and natural selection. Human dissection was certainly a Greek taboo. |
| 4[207] | p.148 | 24099 | We contain many minds, which fight for the 'I' of the mind |
| Full Idea: Many minds are housed within humans like creatures of the sea - they battle one another for the mind 'I'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 4[207]) | |||
| A reaction: I am happy to use the word 'I' for the sense of central control of focus and choice, but there doesn's seem to be an actual organ of the Self, so it is a fiction, but one which reflects the general picture of what happens. I can pick a drive to foster. |
| 5[1]145 | p.180 | 24100 | If you don't want war, remove your borders; but you set up borders because you want war |
| Full Idea: You are waging war? You fear your neighbour? So remove the border markers: then you will have no more neighbours. But you want war: and that's why you set up the border markers in the first place. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]145) | |||
| A reaction: The only reason to demarcate some territory is to keep other people out of it, which is a first act of gentle hostility. The European Union is trying to gradually dismantle the borders. Nietzsche had a creepy liking for war. |
| 5[1]186 | p.185 | 24101 | We always assign values, but we may not value those values |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to live without assigning value: but it is possible to live without assigning value to what you value. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]186) | |||
| A reaction: True. In my terminology, we can't live without thinking some things are more important than others. But that is compatible with not assigning much importance to anything. |
| 5[1]272 | p.196 | 24102 | Thoughts are signs (just as words are) |
| Full Idea: Thoughts are merely signs, as words are signs for thoughts. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[1]272) | |||
| A reaction: The obvious question he invites is 'signs of what?'. His point must be that most thinking is both non-verbal and non-conscious, which he took to be true even of intellectual thought. I sympathise with his view. |
| 5[18] | p.199 | 24103 | You should not want too many virtues; one is enough |
| Full Idea: You should not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is already a lot of virtue. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 5[18]) | |||
| A reaction: A typically challenging thought from the great maverick of philosophy. Which virtue would you choose? Do some virtues entail further virtues? |
| 7[023] | p.222 | 24104 | We don't create logic, time and space! The mind obeys laws because they are true |
| Full Idea: That which is logical, time, space would have to be produced by us: nonsense! When the mind obeys its own laws, this because they are actually true, true in themselves! …An error with respect to these truths avenges itself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[023]) | |||
| A reaction: So much for those who see Nietzsche as the embodiment of relativism. This is Nietzsche standing up to what I increasingly see as the pernicious influence of Kant. I agree with Nietzsche. Relations with the world keep our logic honest. |
| 7[025] | p.224 | 24105 | Drives make us feel non-feelings; Will is the effect of those feelings |
| Full Idea: 'Drive' is only a translation from the language of nonfeeling into the language of feeling. 'Will' is what is communicated to our feelings as a result of that process - in other words an effect, and not the beginning and cause. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[025]) | |||
| A reaction: This shows the link between his central idea of 'drives' in psychology, and the actions that result. Effectively this makes all our actions arise from the unconscious. Intention and choice are effectively epiphenomena. |
| 7[030] | p.225 | 24106 | Talk of 'utility' presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined |
| Full Idea: All this chat about 'utility' already presupposes that what is useful to people has been defined: in other words, useful for what! i.e. the people's purposes are already taken for granted. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[030]) | |||
| A reaction: When they stopped talking about utility they talked instead about 'benefit', but the same objection applies. This is the problem of paternalism in Utilitarianism, which leads to Preference Utilitarianism, which probably doesn't help. |
| 7[057] | p.233 | 24107 | Once a drive controls the intellect, it rules, and sets the goals |
| Full Idea: Once it has taken control of the intellect, every single human drive probably demands to be recognised as the ultimate lord and goal-setter of all human matters. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[057]) | |||
| A reaction: This is the best line of attack against the view I like, that human values arise out of the central functions of human nature. It is roughly the existential objection. Is all intellect controlled by some drive, or can intellect seize control of a drive? |
| 7[077] | p.240 | 24108 | Actions are just a release of force. They seize on something, which becomes the purpose |
| Full Idea: What is the source of actions? For what purpose? …People do not act for happiness, utility or pleasure. Rather, a certain amount of force is released. Seizes on something on which it can vent itself. 'Goal' and 'purpose' are the means for this process. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[077]) | |||
| A reaction: Surprised at how little Nietzsche is discussed in modern theoretical accounts of action. I'm not sure what the evolutionary value might be of a blind force that produces action before its purpose has been decided. Not convinced. What triggers the force? |
| 7[202] | p.273 | 24109 | Actual morality is more complicated and subtle than theory (which gets paralysed) |
| Full Idea: Actual morality is infinitely more subtle, more complicated, more thoughtful than theoretical morality: the latter still stands awkward and embarrassed at the starting point. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[202]) | |||
| A reaction: Glad to find an explicit endorsement of particularism in Nietzsche, since so much of his discussion points that way. |
| 7[241] | p.283 | 24110 | Some things we would never do, even for the highest ideals |
| Full Idea: There are actions that we will never allow ourselves to engage in, not even as a means to the noblest end e.g., betraying a friend. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[241]) | |||
| A reaction: Jean Genet made a point of betraying his friends. I wonder why Nietzsche thinks we should not betray our friends? Being Nietzsche, he will certainly have asked the question. |
| 7[260] | p.286 | 24111 | Happiness is the active equilibrium of our drives |
| Full Idea: Happiness would be the equilibrium of the triggering activities of all the drives. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 7[260]) | |||
| A reaction: For Nietzsche, only the 'highest' sort of human being could achieve such happiness. I can certainly see that there is happiness when a person is fully focused on something that seems worth doing. |
| 9[41] | p.318 | 24112 | To think about being we must have an opinion about what it is |
| Full Idea: We are in the process of figuring out the being of things: consequently we must already have an opinion as to what being is. This can be an error! E.g., I. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[41]) | |||
| A reaction: The point of 'I' is that we unquestioningly think the self is a given aspect of being, as in Descartes. |
| 9[43] | p.319 | 24113 | Our motives don't explain our actions |
| Full Idea: Human actions can in no way be explained by reference to human motives. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[43]) | |||
| A reaction: He takes motives to come after the event. His view seems to be that our actions are deeply inexplicable. But if we explain why we performed some action, are we all and always lying? We give reasons, even if we don't know the source of the reasons. |
| 9[48] | p.322 | 24114 | The pain in truth is when it destroys a belief |
| Full Idea: The truth hurts because it destroys a belief: not in itself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 9[48]) | |||
| A reaction: There are hideous events, about which it can be dreadful to learn the truth, but the unpleasantness is in the fact, not in the truth of the fact. So, yes. |
| 1882 | The Gay (Joyful) Science |
| p.35 | 4275 | You cannot advocate joyful wisdom while rejecting pity, because the two are complementary | |
| Full Idea: Pity and good cheer are complementary, ..so there is something contradictory in a philosophy that advocates joyful wisdom, while slandering pity as the enemy of the higher life. | |||
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882]) by Roger Scruton - Animal Rights and Wrongs p.35 | |||
| A reaction: A good objection to Nietzsche. He has a rather solipsistic view of joyful exuberance etc., and fails to realise how social such things must be. In that, Nietzsche was caught in the romantic tradition of Wordsworth and co. |
| p.73 | 6579 | Nietzsche's perspectivism says our worldview depends on our personality | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche recommends an extreme version of perspectivism in holding that a person's view of the world is a function of that person's life-affirming (Heraclitean) or life-denying (Parmenidean) personality. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3 | |||
| A reaction: Fogelin recommends Nehamas on this topic. I am not convinced Nietzsche takes such an individual view as is implied here. See Idea 4420, for example. This view is in tune with Charles Taylor's view that our values shape our understanding of our selves. |
| §001 | p.75 | 20125 | The ethical teacher exists to give purpose to what happens necessarily and without purpose |
| Full Idea: That what happens necessarily, spontaneously and without any purpose, may henceforth appear to be done for some purpose, and strike man as rational and an ultimate commandment, the ethical teacher comes on stage, as teacher of the purpose of existence. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §001) | |||
| A reaction: This doesn't look like much of a solution to the problem of nihilism, unless the teacher plants an idea in us which endures and grows. Nietzsche's 'eternal recurrence' was supposed to be just such an idea. |
| §021 | p.92 | 20198 | Many virtues are harmful traps, but that is why other people praise them |
| Full Idea: Virtues like industriousness, obedience, chastity, filial piety and justice are usually harmful to those who possess them. When you have a real, whole virtue you are its victim. But your neighbour praises your virtue precisely on that account. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §021) | |||
| A reaction: This is the conspiracy theory of virtue. We want people to do menial or undesirable jobs, so we dress them up as wonderful virtues, and make people feel good for possessing them. There must be some truth in this. |
| §042 | p.108 | 9306 | To ward off boredom at any cost is vulgar |
| Full Idea: To ward off boredom at any cost is vulgar. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §042) | |||
| A reaction: Ignoring 'vulgar', this is a nice thought. Do affluent retired people now travel so much because they are terrified of boredom? What would they end up doing if they stayed at home and lived through the boredom to something else? |
| §110 | p.169 | 20126 | The strength of knowledge is not its truth, but its entrenchment in our culture |
| Full Idea: The strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incoporated, in its character as a condition of life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §110) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be the rather modern idea (in Foucault, perhaps) of knowledge as a central component of culture, rather than as an eternal revelation of facts. Note that he is talking about its 'strength', not its veracity or degree of support. |
| §116 | p.123 | 24076 | A morality ranks human drives and actions, for the sake of the herd, and subordinating individuals |
| Full Idea: Whenever we encounter a morality we find an estimation and order of rank of human drives and actions. These are always the expression of the needs of a community and herd. The individual is valued only as a function of the herd. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §116) | |||
| A reaction: A particularly clear summary of Nietzsche's understanding of modern morality (which he rejects). I tend to see values as what is important, but Nietzsche sees them as a ranking. Could be both. I see the individualism here as existentialist. |
| §121 | p.177 | 4423 | We assume causes, geometry, motion, bodies etc to live, but they haven't been proved |
| Full Idea: We have fixed up a world for ourselves in which we can live, with bodies, lines, planes, causes, motion and form; without these articles of faith nobody would endure life. But that does not mean they have been proved. Life is no argument. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §121) | |||
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree. A lot of recent thought suggests that they are Hume's 'natural beliefs', like truth and induction, which simply can't be proved. 'Unprovable' does not mean 'incorrect', however. |
| §125 | p.181 | 2931 | God is dead, and we have killed him |
| Full Idea: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §125) |
| §205 | p.151 | 24077 | Necessity is thought to require an event, but is only an after-effect of the event |
| Full Idea: Necessity is supposed to be the cause of something coming to be: in truth it is often only an effect of what has come to be. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §205) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds like an account of the traditional idea of destiny - which sees inevitability in some major event, which was previously unpredictable. |
| §244 | p.157 | 24078 | Thoughts cannot be fully reproduced in words |
| Full Idea: Even one's thoughts one cannot reproduce entirely in words. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §244) | |||
| A reaction: I suppose this is the germ of Derrida, who seems to see little connection between thought and speech. I take this idea to be entirely correct. Our simplistic view of language reduces the fluidity and many dimensions of thought to a pile of lego bricks. |
| §283 | p.167 | 24079 | The best life is the dangerous life |
| Full Idea: The secret of harvesting the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from existence is: live dangerously! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §283) | |||
| A reaction: I treasured this quotation when I was 17, but failed to live up to it. |
| §290 | p.170 | 24080 | We should give style to our character - by applying an artistic plan to its strengths and weaknesses |
| Full Idea: One thing is essential - 'giving style' to one's character. It is practised by the one who surveys everything that his nature offers in strengths and weaknesses, and subjects it to an artistic plan until each thing appears as art and reason. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §290) | |||
| A reaction: Clearly existentialist, in its proposal to change one's own character. I invite the reader to consider applying this to themselves - and I submit that it is an impossible project. Nice thought, though. |
| §301 | p.241 | 20141 | Higher human beings see and hear far more than others, and do it more thoughtfully |
| Full Idea: What distinguishes the higher human being from the lower is that the former see and hear immeasurably more, and see and hear thoughtfully - and precisely this distinguishes human beings from animals, and the higher animals from the lower. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §301) | |||
| A reaction: Since most people are well equipped with eyes and ears, I take it that this phenomenon, if true, arises from the 'higher' type of person having more interest in what they experience. |
| §333 | p.195 | 24081 | Most of our intellectual activity is unconscious |
| Full Idea: Only now is the truth dawning on us that the biggest part by far of our intellectual activity takes place unconsciously, and unfelt by us. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §333) | |||
| A reaction: Note that this is 'intellectual activity', and just the hidden rumblings of instincts and emotions. I think he is right. Philosophers want to verbalise everything, but I don't think the main insights of philosophical thinking are verbal. |
| §335 | p.263 | 2932 | 'Know thyself' is impossible and ridiculous |
| Full Idea: "Everybody is farthest away - from himself"; and the maxim "know thyself" addressed to human beings by a god, is almost malicious. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §335) | |||
| A reaction: Expressed with characteristcally Nietzschean brio, but I couldn't agree more, and it is a very important truth. You can only require full self-knowledge if the whole mind is available to be known, and that isn't even remotely the case. |
| §335 | p.263 | 2933 | Why do you listen to the voice of your conscience? |
| Full Idea: Why do you listen to the voice of your conscience? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §335) | |||
| A reaction: Nice question. It is perfectly plausible to say that I seem to feel guilty about doing something, but can't see any reason why I should. |
| §335 | p.265 | 2934 | To see one's own judgement as a universal law is selfish |
| Full Idea: It is selfish to experience one's own judgement as a universal law. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §335) |
| §335 | p.265 | 2935 | No two actions are the same |
| Full Idea: There neither are nor can be actions which are the same. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §335) |
| §341 | p.273 | 2936 | Imagine if before each of your actions you had to accept repeating the action over and over again |
| Full Idea: Suppose a demon were to say to you, "This life as you have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more". …Then the question in each thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie across your actions. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §341) | |||
| A reaction: If you were stuck in nihilistic indifference, this thought might not be enough to rouse you from your torpor. If all possibilities in life are boring, repetition cannot pep it up, or make it any worse. But I still love this idea! |
| §342 | p.192 | 6842 | Nietzsche says facing up to the eternal return of meaninglessness is the response to nihilism |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche is overwhelmingly concerned with how to respond to nihilism, and he offers the concept of eternal return; the Overman is one who can affirm over and over that one is equal to meaninglessness, without turning to despair or idols. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §342) by Simon Critchley - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.192 | |||
| A reaction: I agree with Critchley that this is not much of a recipe for ordinary people's lives, and I don't even find it very congenial for a tough-minded philosopher. We should make the best of the cards we are dealt, however feeble they may appear. |
| §344 | p.208 | 24082 | Is the will to truth the desire to avoid deception? |
| Full Idea: This unconditional will to truth: what is it? Is it the will not to let oneself be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §344) | |||
| A reaction: He is hunting for the evolutionary origin of the love of truth, in the needs of a community. In that sense, I would have thought it was just the pressure to get the facts right, because error is dangerous. Nice thought, though. |
| §345 | p.146 | 22471 | Nietzsche thought it 'childish' to say morality isn't binding because it varies between cultures |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche was not simply a run-of-the-mill moral relativist. He branded as 'childish' the idea that no morality can be binding because moral valuations are necessarily different among different nations. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §345) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.146 | |||
| A reaction: Relativists about knowledge and morality are inclined to take quotations from Nietzsche out of context. The existence of this database probably exacerbates such intellectual wickedness. Get a feeling for the whole thinker! |
| §354 | p.297 | 20115 | All of our normal mental life could be conducted without consciousness |
| Full Idea: We could think, feel, will and remember, and we could also 'act', and yet none of this would have to enter our consciousness. The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: He credits Leibniz with this line of thought. Nowadays the unconscious aspects of thought are a commonplace, not just from Freud, but from neuroscience. We have no idea how conscious other animals are. Nietzsche attributes consciousness to communication. |
| §354 | p.297 | 20116 | Most of our lives, even the important parts, take place outside of consciousness |
| Full Idea: By far the greatest proportion of our life takes place without this mirroring effect [of consciousness]; and this is true even of our thinking, feeling and willing life, however offensive this may sound to older philosophers. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche didn't just hint at the possibility of a (Freudian) sub-conscious - he was whole-heartedly committed to it, and Freud gave him credit for it. I think philosophers are only just beginning to digest this crucial idea. |
| §354 | p.298 | 20117 | Only the need for communication has led to consciousness developing |
| Full Idea: I surmise that consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need for communication; ...consciousness is really only a net of communication between human beings. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: An interesting speculation, well ahead of its time. Given that thought does not require consciousness, as he claims, it is not quite clear why communication needs it. Presumably two robots can communicate. But Idea 20118 is good. |
| §354 | p.299 | 20120 | Whatever moves into consciousness becomes thereby much more superficial |
| Full Idea: Whatever becomes conscious becomes by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal; all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to superficialities, and generalisation. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche would have made a great speech writer for someone. This vision is increasingly how I see people. It is a view reinforced by modern neuroscience, which suggests that we greatly overestimate the conscious part of ourselves. |
| §354 | p.299 | 20118 | Only our conscious thought is verbal, and this shows the origin of consciousness |
| Full Idea: Only conscious thinking takes the form of words, which is to say signs of communication, and this fact uncovers the origin of consciousness. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: Chicken-and-egg question here. Persinally I take consciousnes to be associated with meta-thought, which bestows huge power, and I take language to arise from meta-thought. |
| §354 | p.299 | 20119 | We became increasingly conscious of our sense impressions in order to communicate them |
| Full Idea: The emergence of our sense impressions into our consciousness, the ability to fix them and, as it were, exhibit them externally, increased proportionally with the need to communicate them to others by means of signs. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: He says in the same section that such ideas (plus his thoughts on consciousness) are the essence of his 'Perspectivism'. In effect, knowledge is not an individual activity, but a team game |
| §354 | p.300 | 20122 | We have no organ for knowledge or truth; we only 'know' what is useful to the human herd |
| Full Idea: We simply lack any organ for knowledge, for 'truth'; we 'know' [das Erkennen] (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species; and this 'utility' is ultimately also a mere belief. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: [Section §354 is fascinating!] An odd idea, that we can only have truth is we have an 'organ' for it. It seems plausible that the whole brain is a truth machine. This seems like pure pragmatism, with all its faults. Falsehoods can be useful. |
| §354 | p.300 | 20121 | Grammar only reveals popular metaphysics |
| Full Idea: The snares of grammar are the metaphysics of the people. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §354) | |||
| A reaction: If you have this elitist view of metaphysics, then linguistic analysis is just a branch of anthropology. |
| §357 | p.306 | 20360 | We Germans value becoming and development more highly than mere being of what 'is' |
| Full Idea: We Germans are Hegelians insofar as we instinctively attribute a deeper sense and richer value to becoming and development than to what 'is'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §357) | |||
| A reaction: I always doubt Nietzsche's claims about 'we Germans' or 'we philosophers'. They say that, intellectually, everyone is either French or German, and my immediate response was to embrace being German. So becoming is where it's at. |
| §374 | p.252 | 24083 | It would be absurd to say we are only permitted our own single perspective |
| Full Idea: I think today we are at least far removed from the ridiculous immodesty of decreeing from our corner that one is permitted to have perspectives only from this corner. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §374) | |||
| A reaction: He goes on to speculate about the possibility of infinite perspectives, most of them unknowable to us. But Nietzsche was not a simple relativism. The obvious concept needed to accompany a many-perspectives view is consensus. |
| 1884 | Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 |
| 25[013] | p.8 | 24124 | We now have innumerable perspectives to draw on |
| Full Idea: We have been granted perspectives in all directions, broader than any humans have ever been granted, everywhere we look there is no end in sight. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[013]) | |||
| A reaction: Clearly perspectivism is not the simple relativism of being trapped in our own private perspective. What strikes me as missing from Nietzsche's brief thoughts is the question of consensus, and even rational and objective consensus. |
| 25[017] | p.10 | 24125 | Aristotle enjoyed the sham generalities of a system, as the peak of happiness! |
| Full Idea: Aristotle probably had his best moments when he coldly and clearly (and joyfully) enjoyed the sensual sham of the highest generalities. To perceive the world as a system, and as the pinnacle of human happiness: how the schematic mind betrays itself then! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[017]) | |||
| A reaction: Painful, this. One of my heroes laughing at the other one. I love systems, and love John Richardson's suggestion that Nietzsche was very systematice, despite his protestations. |
| 25[021] | p.11 | 24126 | We contain multitudes of characters, which can brought into the open |
| Full Idea: There is a multitude of characters hidden within each one of us: and attempts should be made to allow some of them to appear. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[021]) | |||
| A reaction: So character is not fate, contrary to Heraclitus (his hero). We are more inclined now to see varied characters as social roles (as in Irving Goffman). This idea challenges it, with our intrinsic nature containing variety. |
| 25[119] | p.36 | 24127 | Judging actions by intentions - like judging painters by their thoughts! |
| Full Idea: To judge people by intentions! That would be like classifying artists, not according to their paintings, but according to their visions! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[119]) | |||
| A reaction: What is wrong is to judge an action by any simple single principle. Our nuanced attitude to excuses shows the true complexity of it. 'I didn't mean to do that'. |
| 25[127] | p.38 | 24128 | After history following God, or a people, or an idea, we now see it in terms of animals |
| Full Idea: Earlier we sought God's intentions in history: then an unconscious purposefulness, in a people or an idea. Only recently are we considering the history of animals, and the first insight is that no plan has so far existed. Coincidences have been dominant. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[127]) | |||
| A reaction: Not a Whig historian then! Presumably Hegel is his main target. In 2024 there is a definite feeling that western democracies are regressing. |
| 25[168] | p.49 | 24130 | An affirmative belief is present in every basic sense impression |
| Full Idea: Belief is already present in every sense impression going back to the very moment it begins: and kind of Yes-saying first intellectual activity! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[168]) | |||
| A reaction: He seems right that there is an intrinsic commitment to believing sense impressions, even in animals. Presumably more of a default setting than an intellectual choice. |
| 25[168] | p.49 | 24129 | We start with images, then words, and then concepts, to which emotions attach |
| Full Idea: Images first, the words applied to images. Finally concepts, not possible until there are words a summary of many images. When see similar images for which there is one word - this weak emotion is the common element, the foundation of the concept. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[168]) | |||
| A reaction: Unusual to have an account of the origin of concepts in 1884. His theory entails that animals can't have concepts, but presumably they can combine images, and hence recognise things. I think he is wrong, but interestng. Mental files. |
| 25[185] | p.54 | 24131 | There is no 'being'; it is just the opposition to nothingness |
| Full Idea: 'Being' is unprovable, because there is no 'being'. The concept of being is formed out of the opposition to 'nothingness'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[185]) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably a comment on Hegel's most basic idea. I find both thoughts bewildering. 'Being' is just a generalised (and unhelpful) way of referring to the self-evident existence of stuff. |
| 25[208] | p.58 | 24132 | After Socrates virtue is misunderstood, as good for all, not for individuals |
| Full Idea: From Socrates onwards arete [virtue] is misunderstood - first it had to reestablish itself over and over, and yet it did not want to do this on an individual basis! But rather tyrannically 'good for all!'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[208]) | |||
| A reaction: Why not both? The virtues of a good citizen can't be private, but we are all allowed to develop virtues that concern us alone. |
| 25[214] | p.60 | 24133 | I have perfected fatalism, as recurrence and denial of the will |
| Full Idea: I have perfected fatalism, through eternal recurrence and preexistence, and through the elimination of the concept 'will'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[214]) | |||
| A reaction: 'Amor fati' - love of fate - was his oft repeated slogan. We can all understand 'go with the flow', but I'm not sure about anything more universal than that. |
| 25[225] | p.62 | 24134 | There is always slavery, whether we like it or not |
| Full Idea: In truth there is always slavery - whether you want it or not; e.g. Prussian officials. Scholars. Monks. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[225]) | |||
| A reaction: Not very persuasive examples. Monks are free to join and to leave. Maybe a lot of marriages are close to slavery for one side (usually the woman). Strict slavery has almost ceased in western civilisation (I think!). Nietzsche saw 'the herd' as slaves. |
| 25[287] | p.74 | 24135 | Egoism should not assume that all egos are equal |
| Full Idea: Egoism! But no one has ever asked: what kind of ego! Instead, every person automatically assumes that the ego of every ego is equal. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[287]) | |||
| A reaction: This is his first step in his defence of some form of egoism. Presumably 'higher' people should be egoists, and the rest should join the herd. |
| 25[290] | p.74 | 24136 | Who can endure the thought of eternal recurrence? |
| Full Idea: I conduct the great test: who will endure the thought of eternal recurrence? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[290]) | |||
| A reaction: He sometimes talks as if eternal recurrence were a cosmic fact, but we should definitely ignore that. This idea captures his idea best, I think - that we should try to live with the prospect of recurrence always in mind. A type of existentialism. |
| 25[307] | p.78 | 24138 | Strongly believed a priori is not certain; it may just be a feature of our existence |
| Full Idea: What we believe the most, everything a priori, is not for that reason more certain, just because it is so strongly believed. Rather, it is perhaps a consequence of the condition for the existence of our species. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[307]) | |||
| A reaction: This is in defiance of Leibniz and Kant. His proposed explanation is not very convincing. Russell agreed with Nietzsche. |
| 25[307] | p.78 | 24137 | Mathematics is just accurate inferences from definitions, and doesn't involve objects |
| Full Idea: Mathematics contains axioms (definitions) and conclusions from definitions. Its objects do not exist. The truth of its conclusions rests on the accuracy of logical thought. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[307]) | |||
| A reaction: Not suprising to find Nietzsche defying platonism. This is evidence that he was a systematic philosopher, who knew mathematics could be a challenge to his naturalism. |
| 25[363] | p.95 | 24139 | A 'person' is just one possible abstraction from a bundle of qualities |
| Full Idea: Individuals contain many more persons than they think. 'Person' is merely a point of emphasis, synopsis of characteristics and qualities | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[363]) | |||
| A reaction: He makes similar remarks abour character. For Locke 'person'' is a forensic and legal concept, and so must be enduring and unique. |
| 25[371] | p.96 | 24140 | Cause and effect is a hypothesis, based on our supposed willing of actions |
| Full Idea: Cause and effect is not a truth but rather a hypothesis - and indeed the one which we use to anthropomorphise the world for ourselves, bringing it in closer proximity to our feelings ('willing' is projected into it). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[371]) | |||
| A reaction: That is (I think), we read the gap between thought and action onto natural external events, dividing them up. We treat the flow of events as if they were agent causation. Modern theories seem close to Nietzsche's unified view. |
| 25[406] | p.105 | 24141 | Having a sense of time presupposes absolute time |
| Full Idea: Our derivation of the sense of time etc. still presupposes time as absolute. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[406]) | |||
| A reaction: 'Etc.'? I suppose this is meant to pre-empt whatever Bergson might have been planning to say. The idea that time actually is subjective strikes as very wrong. Whether physicists can reduce time to something else is above my pay scale. |
| 25[435] | p.113 | 24142 | What matters is how humans can be developed |
| Full Idea: What can be made out of humans: this is what matters to superior human beings. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[435]) | |||
| A reaction: That seems to sum up the main aim of Nietzsche's philosophy. What would we then do if the aim was somehow achieved? Does he seriously think that one magnificent ubermensch could achieve this aim? |
| 25[449] | p.118 | 24143 | Thinkers might agree some provisional truths, as methodological assumptions |
| Full Idea: It is sufficient if we [thinkers] come to agree about a totality of methodological presuppositions - about 'provisional truths' that we want to use as a guideline for our work. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[449]) | |||
| A reaction: Descartes attempted this. Maybe Frege is another attempt. Husserl, perhaps? Parmenides? Hume? Lewis? It is hard to imagine Nietzsche joining in a professional consensus! He has just rejected systems. |
| 26[018] | p.139 | 24144 | A cognitive mechanism wanting to know itself is absurd! |
| Full Idea: A cognitive mechanism that wants to know itself!! We definitely should have moved beyond this absurd goal! (The stomach that consumes itself! -) | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[018]) | |||
| A reaction: We see his point, but Nietzsche learns a huge amount about himself by introspection. To know the Self is a cat chasing its tail. I don't have to leave England to study England. |
| 26[061] | p.148 | 24145 | Mind is a mechanism of abstraction and simplification, aimed at control |
| Full Idea: The entire cognitive mechanism is a mechanism of abstraction and simplification - not aimed at knowing, but taking control of things. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[061]) | |||
| A reaction: It is my view that we can explain our metaphysics in this way, though I am more realist than Nietzsche, because I think the world has created these capacities within us, so they fit the world. To control, you must know. |
| 26[064] | p.149 | 24146 | All the major problems were formulated before Socrates |
| Full Idea: All the major problems were formulated before Socrates. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[064]) | |||
| A reaction: So much for it all being 'footnotes to Plato'! Nietzsche's lectures on the pre-Socratics are in print. Given how little survives, this idea is surprising. Nietzsche knew enough to infer a lot of what is lost. |
| 26[092] | p.157 | 24147 | Thoughts are uncertain, and are just occasions for interpretation |
| Full Idea: A thought is not taken to be immediately certain, but rather a sign, a question mark. That each thought is initially ambiguous and fluctuating, and is in itself only an occasion for multiple interpretations …is experienced by every deep observer. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[092]) | |||
| A reaction: This idea makes me a little more sympathetic to the hermeneutic view of philosophy, as endless interpretations. I assumed it only referred to texts. A thought is not a done deal, but an occasion for further thought. He says the same of feelings. |
| 26[117] | p.164 | 24148 | If you love something, it is connected with everything, so all must be affirmed as good |
| Full Idea: To appreciate and love anything, I must understand it as absolutely necessarily connected with everything that is - therefore I must affirm the goodness of all existence for its own sake. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[117]) | |||
| A reaction: For those of you out there imagining that Nietzsche was a nihilist…… It's a plausible idea. You could hardly love your dog, but hate the whole universe. A true misanthrope would struggle to love one exceptional person. |
| 26[119] | p.165 | 24149 | Values need a perspective, of preserving some aspect of life |
| Full Idea: All value judgements involve a particular perspective: preservation of the individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a belief, a culture. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[119]) | |||
| A reaction: This chimes in with my Aristotelian view of value, as arising out of the thing valued, rather than descending on it from outside. I think more than mere 'preservaation' is at stake. Fostering, cherishing. |
| 26[156] | p.173 | 24150 | We can only understand through concepts, which subsume particulars in generalities |
| Full Idea: We have only one form of understanding - concept, the more general case that subsumes the particular case. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[156]) | |||
| A reaction: This is precisely Aristotle's problem with scientific explanation - that we aim to understand each particular, but accounts and definitions have to be expressed with universals. |
| 26[352] | p.223 | 24151 | I only want thinking that is anchored in body, senses and earth |
| Full Idea: I am not interested …in ways of thinking that are not anchored in the body and the senses and in the earth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[352]) | |||
| A reaction: Exhibit A for Nietzsche as Naturalist. Indeed, this could be a manifesto for the whole school. I totally and completely and utterly agree with Nietzsche's assertion!. I see the 'anchor' as two-way: thought connects to earth, and thought arises from it. |
| 26[442] | p.248 | 24152 | Fate is inspiring, if you understand you are part of it |
| Full Idea: Fate is an inspiring thought for those who understand that they are part of it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 26[442]) | |||
| A reaction: Sounds a bit like the Niagara Falls being inspiring if you are being swept over it. I find the possibility of fatalism neutral, rather than inspiring. |
| 27[030] | p.263 | 24153 | Humans are determined by community, so its preservation is their most valued drive |
| Full Idea: If a community is what absolutely determines the nature of humans, then the drive that allows the community to be preserved will be most forcefully developed in them. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 27[030]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a loner, who despised 'the herd' and its dull 'good and evil', but humans are obviously social creatures, who need to raise families, so it seems perverse to despise the values this requires. Note the Marxist view of human nature. |
| 29[054] | p.322 | 24154 | If you want one experience repeated, you must want all of them |
| Full Idea: Whoever wants to have a single experience again must want all of them again. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 29[054]) | |||
| A reaction: Nehemas says this is the main factual commitment of eternal recurrence (and certainly not that global recurrence actually occurs). It might be expressed in terms of possible worlds. We yearn for recurrence, then dread it? |
| 1884 | Thus Spake Zarathustra |
| 1.01 | p.42 | 18286 | The greatest experience possible is contempt for your own happiness, reason and virtue |
| Full Idea: What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness grows loathsome to you, and your reason and your virtue also. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.01) | |||
| A reaction: This would be a transient state for Nietzsche, in which you realise the hollowness of those traditional ideas, and begin to seek something else. |
| 1.01 | p.46 | 18287 | People now find both wealth and poverty too much of a burden |
| Full Idea: Nobody grows rich or poor any more: both are too much of a burden. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.01) | |||
| A reaction: True. Most people I know are just puzzled by people who actually seem to want to be extremely wealthy. |
| 1.04 | p.60 | 18288 | Heaven was invented by the sick and the dying |
| Full Idea: It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.04) |
| 1.05 | p.62 | 18290 | But what is the reasoning of the body, that it requires the wisdom you seek? |
| Full Idea: There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. For who knows for what purpose your body requires precisely your best wisdom? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.05) | |||
| A reaction: Lovely question. For years I've paid lip-service to wisdom as the rough aim of all philosophy. Not quite knowing what wisdom is doesn't bother me, but knowing why I want wisdom certainly does, especially after this idea. |
| 1.05 | p.62 | 18289 | Forget the word 'I'; 'I' is performed by the intelligence of your body |
| Full Idea: You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this - although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.05) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure if I understand this, but I offer it as a candidate for the most profound idea ever articulated about personal identity. |
| 1.07 | p.64 | 18291 | Virtues can destroy one another, through jealousy |
| Full Idea: Every virtue is jealous of the others, and jealousy is a terrible thing. Even virtues can be destroyed through jealousy. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.07) | |||
| A reaction: How much more subtle and plausible than the picture of accumulating virtues, like medals! Zarathustra says it is best to have just one virtue. |
| 1.08 | p.68 | 18292 | I can only believe in a God who can dance |
| Full Idea: I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.08) |
| 1.09 | p.71 | 18293 | The noble man wants new virtues; the good man preserves what is old |
| Full Idea: The noble man wants to create new things and a new virtue. The good man wants the old things and that the old things shall be preserved. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.09) | |||
| A reaction: There is a limit to how many plausible virtues the noble men can come up with. We may already have run out. Are we going to have to re-run the Iliad? |
| 1.12 | p.75 | 18294 | The state coldly claims that it is the people, but that is a lie |
| Full Idea: The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people'. It is a lie! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.12) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as just as true even after everyone gets the vote. Rulers can't help gradually forgetting about the people. |
| 1.15 | p.82 | 18295 | If you want friends, you must be a fighter |
| Full Idea: If you want a friend, you must be willing to wage war for him: and to wage war, you must be capable of being an enemy. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.15) |
| 1.16 | p.84 | 18296 | An enduring people needs its own individual values |
| Full Idea: No people could live without evaluating; but if it wishes to maintain itself it must not evaluate as its neighbour evaluates. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.16) | |||
| A reaction: Political philosophers say plenty about a 'people', but little about what unifies them, or about what keeps one people distinct from another. Most people's are proud of their local values. |
| 1.16 | p.85 | 18297 | We created meanings, to maintain ourselves |
| Full Idea: Man first implanted values into things to maintain himself - he first created the meaning of things, a human meaning! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 1.16) |
| 2.02 | p.110 | 18298 | Not being a god is insupportable, so there are no gods! |
| Full Idea: If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Therefore there are no gods. ...For what would there to be create if gods - existed! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 2.02) | |||
| A reaction: [Zarathustra says this, not Nietzsche!] |
| 2.20 | p.161 | 18299 | The will is constantly frustrated by the past |
| Full Idea: Powerless against that which has been done, the will is an angry spectator of all things past. The will cannot will backwards; that it cannot break time and time's desire - that is the will's most lonely affliction. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 2.20) |
| 2.20 | p.162 | 18300 | Whenever we have seen suffering, we have wanted the revenge of punishment |
| Full Idea: The spirit of revenge: my friends, that, up to now, has been mankind's chief concern; and where there was suffering, there was always supposed to be punishment. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 2.20) |
| 3.03 | p.181 | 18301 | We only really love children and work |
| Full Idea: One loves from the very heart only one's child and one's work. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 3.03) |
| 3.10.2 | p.207 | 18302 | Man and woman are deeply strange to one another! |
| Full Idea: Who has fully conceived how strange man and woman are to one another! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 3.10.2) |
| 3.12.23 | p.228 | 18303 | Reject wisdom that lacks laughter |
| Full Idea: Let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 3.12.23) |
| 4.09 | p.285 | 18304 | Saints want to live as they desire, or not to live at all |
| Full Idea: 'To live as I desire to live or not to live at all': that is what I want, that is what the most saintly man wants. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 4.09) | |||
| A reaction: [spoken by Zarathustra] |
| 4.13.9 | p.301 | 18305 | To love truth, you must know how to lie |
| Full Idea: Inability to lie is far from being love of truth. ....He who cannot lie does not know what truth is. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 4.13.9) |
| 4.18.2 | p.325 | 18306 | We don't want heaven; now that we are men, we want the kingdom of earth |
| Full Idea: We certainly do not want to enter into the kingdom of heaven: we have become men, so we want the kingdom of earth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 4.18.2) |
| 4.20 | p.336 | 18307 | I want my work, not happiness! |
| Full Idea: Do I aspire after happiness? I aspire after my work! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 4.20) |
| I.4 | p.76 | 20757 | The powerful self behind your thoughts and feelings is your body |
| Full Idea: Behind your thoughts and feelings stands a powerful commander, an unknown wise man - he is called a self. He lives in your body; he is your body. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], I.4), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Creature' | |||
| A reaction: I find Nietzsche's view of the self very congenial, though I tend to see the self as certain central functions of the brain. The brain is enmeshed in the body (as in the location of pains). |
| 1885 | Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) |
| p.6 | 7846 | Nietzsche thinks philosophy makes us more profound, but not better | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche does not think philosopher exists to make us better human beings - but it can make us more profound ones. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - How to Read Nietzsche Intro | |||
| A reaction: What is the point of being more 'profound' if that isn't 'better'? Are we sure that Kant is more 'profound' than a Yanomamo Indian? Personally I think philosophy tends to produce moral improvement, but I have seen a few striking counterexamples. |
| p.6 | 20128 | Each person has a fixed constitution, which makes them a particular type of person | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's view (which we may call the 'Doctrine of Types') is that each person has a fixed psycho-physical constitution, which defines him as a particular type of person. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 1 'What kind' | |||
| A reaction: An interestesting variant, standing between the Aristotelian picture of one shared human nature, and the existentialist picture of our endlessly malleable nature. So what type am I, and what type are you? How many types are there? |
| p.9 | 7847 | Initially nihilism was cosmic, but later Nietzsche saw it as a cultural matter | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's first presentation of nihilism is an existential affair arising from cosmic problems, but he later stressed nihilism as a historical and cultural problem of values, where mankind's highest values reach a point of devaluation. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - How to Read Nietzsche Ch.1 | |||
| A reaction: The second version seems to imply a quasi-Marxist determinism about social progress. Then you would have to ask, what is the point of fighting against it? I wonder if Nietzsche's values are anti-nihilist, but his metaethics makes nihilism unavoidable? |
| p.11 | 20352 | Nietzsche has a metaphysics, as well as perspectives - the ontology is the perspectives | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's thought includes both a metaphysics and a perspectivism, once these are more complexly grasped. But I argue that the metaphysics is basic: it's an ontology of perspectives. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System Intro | |||
| A reaction: Very good. If it was just gormless relativism, which is what many people hope for in Nietzsche, why is it many perspectives? If they are just relative, having lots of them is no help. The point is they sum, and increase verisimilitude. |
| p.21 | 8041 | The superman is a monstrous oddity, not a serious idea | |
| Full Idea: The Übermensch belongs in the pages of a philosophical bestiary rather than in serious discussion. | |||
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.2 | |||
| A reaction: It may just be an empirical and historical fact that the value-systems of a culture arise from the characters of a few strong-willed and charismatic individuals, rather than from collective need - let along collective philosophising. |
| p.49 | 20106 | Nietzsche was fascinated by a will that can turn against itself | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche was fascinated by the idea of a will that turns against itself, against its usual impulses. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 03 | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as very existentialist - a case of existence before essence. |
| p.52 | 20107 | How many mediocre thinkers are occupied with influential problems! | |
| Full Idea: It is a terrible thought to contemplate that an immense number of mediocre thinkers are occupied with really influential matters. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 03 | |||
| A reaction: [in a journal of 1867] What would he say now, with the plethora of academics and students aspiring to the highest levels of human thought? If I face up to the fact that I am 'mediocre', should I stop? And become mediocre at something else? |
| p.93 | 20135 | Nietzsche's higher type of man is much more important than the idealised 'superman' | |
| Full Idea: The 'superman' has received far more attention from commentators than it warrants: the higher type of human being (a Goethe or a Nietzsche) is much more important than the hyperbolic, and often obscure, Zarathustrian rhetoric about the über-mensch. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 4 'Higher' n2 | |||
| A reaction: Leiter says the über-mensch idea almost entirely drops out of Nietzsche's mature work. |
| p.104 | 9782 | Nietzsche urges that nihilism be active, and will nothing itself | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche opposes active to passive nihilism - it is better to actively will nothing itself than not to will anything. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Slavoj Zizek - Conversations, with Glyn Daly §3 | |||
| A reaction: To 'actively will nothing' sounds to me indistinguishable from suicide, which I don't believe was ever on Nietzsche's agenda. It is hard, though, to disentangle Nietzsche's attitude to nihilism. |
| p.115 | 22503 | Nietzsche could only revalue human values for a different species | |
| Full Idea: It is only for a different species that Nietzsche's most radical revaluation of values could be valid. It is not valid for us as we are, or are ever likely to be. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness 7 | |||
| A reaction: This is the Aristotelian view, that our values and virtues arise out of our human nature, with which I largely agree, though we should resist its rather conservative tendencies. |
| p.155 | 22475 | Moral generalisation is wrong, because we should evaluate individual acts | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche believed that moral generalisation was impossible because the proper subject of evaluation was, instead, a person's individual act. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.155 | |||
| A reaction: This suggests a different type of particularism, focusing on the particular decision, rather than on the details of the situation. Presumable no two moral decisions are ever sufficiently the same to be compared. But a lie is a lie. |
| p.157 | 22476 | Nietzsche thought our psychology means there can't be universal human virtues | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche believed, in effect, that as the facts of human psychology really were, there could be no such thing as human virtues, dispositions good in any man. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche's Immoralism p.157 | |||
| A reaction: Presumably each individual can only have virtues appropriate to their individual nature, which is something like channelling their personal psychological drives. Can't we each have our individual version of courage or honesty? |
| p.163 | 20371 | Nietzsche thinks we should join a society, in order to criticise, heal and renew it | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche thinks the best way of both joining and opposing a society is to find where it's sick, to be its merciless critic and exposer, and to help heal and renew it. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885]) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 3.3 | |||
| A reaction: This sounds like the great Victorian sages, such as Ruskin and Arnold. Christopher Hitchens was a nice recent example. Maybe these have been the finest British citizens? |
| 01 | p.27 | 20104 | Nietzsche tried to lead a thought-provoking life |
| Full Idea: All of us ponder our existences, but Nietzsche strove to lead the kind of life that would yield food for thought. | |||
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 01) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 01 | |||
| A reaction: Could Nietzsche possibly be a role model for us in this respect? If I were starting afresh, guided by this thought, I'm not sure how I would go about it. It is Nietzsche's astonishing independence of thought that hits you. |
| 1 | p.20 | 20353 | The 'will to power' is basically applied to drives and forces, not to people |
| Full Idea: 'Will to power' is most basically applied not to people but to 'drives' or 'forces', simpler units which Nietzsche sometimes calls 'points' and 'power quanta'. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 1) by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 1 | |||
| A reaction: This strikes as a correct account of Nietzsche, and a hugely important interpretative point. He wasn't saying that all human beings would conquer the world if they could. The point is there are many conflicting and combining wills to power. |
| 1.145 | p.86 | 20108 | Every culture loses its identity and power if it lacks a major myth |
| Full Idea: Without myth every culture loses its natural healthy creating power: only a horizon encircled with myths can mark off a cultural movement as a discrete unit. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 1.145) | |||
| A reaction: In the early part of his career this was a big idea for Nietzsche, especially associated with Wagner's Ring, but he moved away from the idea later. |
| 10/7[98] | p.122 | 20367 | Individual development is more important than the state, but a community is necessary |
| Full Idea: All states and communities are something lower than the individual, but necessary kinds for his higher development. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 10/7[98]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.4 n104 | |||
| A reaction: This indicates why Nietzsche should not really be taken as a political thinker, though I would say there is a sort of communitarianism implied in this, just as for Aristotle virtue is supreme, which needs social expression. |
| 2.122 | p.46 | 20105 | Storms are wonderful expressions of free powers! |
| Full Idea: How different the lightning, the storm, the hail, free powers, without ethics! How happy, how powerful they are, pure will, untarnished by intellect! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 2.122), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 02 | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a perfect embodiment of the Romantic Movement! I take this to be a deep observation, since I think raw powers are the most fundamental aspect of nature. Schopenhauer is behind this idea. |
| 6.37 | p.204 | 20113 | Friendly chats undermine my philosophy; wanting to be right at the expense of love is folly |
| Full Idea: My entire philosophy wavers after just an hour of friendly conversation with complete strangers. It strikes me as so foolish to insist on being right at the expense of love. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 6.37), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 09 | |||
| A reaction: [Letter to Gast, 1880] Strangers who met Nietzsche on walks reported how kind and friendly he was. Most people want to be right most of the time, but a few people have this vice in rather excessive form. Especially philosophers! |
| 7 | p.104 | 22500 | Nietzsche failed to see that moral actions can be voluntary without free will |
| Full Idea: To threaten morality Nietzsche needed to show not only that free will was an illusion, but also that no other distinction between voluntary and involuntary action (Aristotle's, for instance) would do instead. He seems to be wrong about this. | |||
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 7) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness | |||
| A reaction: Just the idea I have been seeking! There is no free will, so in what way are we responsible? Simple: we are responsible for any act which can be shown to be voluntary. It can't just be any action we fully caused, because of accidents. |
| 7 | p.110 | 22501 | Nietzsche classified actions by the nature of the agent, not the nature of the act |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche thought profoundly mistaken a taxonomy that classified actions as the doing of this or that, insisting that the true nature of an action depended rather on the nature of the individual who did it. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 7) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness 7 | |||
| A reaction: This is more in the spirit of Aristotle than in the modern legalistic style. It seems to totally ignore consequences, which would puzzle victims or beneficiaries of the action. |
| 8.432 | p.23 | 20102 | Flight from boredom leads to art |
| Full Idea: Flight from boredom is the mother of all art. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 8.432), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography Intro | |||
| A reaction: I might even say that all human achievement comes from boredom. |
| 9.496,503 | p.231 | 20124 | Reliving life countless times - this gives the value back to life which religion took away |
| Full Idea: "Is this something I want to do countless times?" ....Let us etch the image of eternity onto our own lives! This thought embodies more than all religions, which taught us to disdain life as something ephemeral and to look toward an unspecified other life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9.496,503), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 10 | |||
| A reaction: You can't get away from eternal recurrence being an imaginative trick, to focus value onto our choices. For a while Nietzsche tried to persuade himself that the recurrence actually occurred, but we all know it doesn't. |
| 9.525 | p.227 | 20123 | First see nature as non-human, then fit ourselves into this view of nature |
| Full Idea: My task is the dehumanisation of nature, and then the naturalisation of humanity once it has attained the pure concept of 'nature'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9.525), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 10 | |||
| A reaction: Safranski sees this as summarising Nietzsche's project, and it could be a mission statement for naturalism. This idea pinpoints why I take Nietzsche to be important - as a pioneer of the naturalistic view of people. |
| 9/11[243] | p.243 | 20379 | Reason is just another organic drive, developing late, and fighting for equality |
| Full Idea: Reason is a support organ that slowly develops itself, ...and emancipates itself slowly to equal rights with the organic drives - so that reason (belief and knowledge) fights with the drives, as itself a new drive, very late come to preponderance. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 9/11[243]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 4.3.2 n55 | |||
| A reaction: A very powerful and fascinating idea. There is a silly post-modern tendency to think that Nietzsche denegrates and trivialises reason because of remarks like this, but he takes ranking the drives to be the supreme activity. I rank reason high. |
| p.51 | p.231 | 20376 | We begin with concepts of kinds, from individuals; but that is not the essence of individuals |
| Full Idea: The overlooking of individuals gives us the concept and with this our knowledge begins: in categorising, in the setting up of kinds. But the essence of things does not correspond to this. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], p.51) | |||
| A reaction: [dated c1873] Aha! So Nietzsche agrees with me in my defence of individual essences, against kind essences (which seem to me to obviously derive from the nature of individuals). Deep in my heart I knew I would find this quotation one day. |
| 1886 | Beyond Good and Evil |
| p.37 | 23440 | Nietzsche's judgement of actions by psychology instead of outcome was poisonous | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche wants to judge actions not by what is done, but by the nature of the person who does them, and that is poisonous. We have to be horrified by what is done by Hitler and Stalin, without inquiring into their psychology. | |||
| From: comment on Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886]) by Philippa Foot - Interview with Philippa Foot p.37 | |||
| A reaction: She says morality should focus on social needs, not on spontaneity, energy and passion. Nietzsche was very much a product of romanticism. Some of Nietzsche's heroes are military conquerors, so I think she is right. |
| p.78 | 7078 | The freedom of the subject means the collapse of moral certainty | |
| Full Idea: In the 1880s Nietzsche diagnosed the concept of nihilism for a whole range of continental thinkers: the recognition of the subject's freedom goes hand in hand with the collapse of moral certainty in the world. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.5 | |||
| A reaction: Avoiding this dilemma is just one of the many bonuses offered to those who abandon the idea of free will. The fact that one can decide to be wicked doesn't bring an end to morality. Philosophers should think more concretely about human life. |
| p.84 | 7079 | Nietzsche resists nihilism through new values, for a world of becoming, without worship | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's work is a resistance to nihilism. This is why he insists that new categories and values are required that would permit us to endure this world of becoming without either falling into despair or inventing some new god and bowing before it. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro | |||
| A reaction: The trouble is that all Nietzsche offers is the invention of values out of nothing by some wretched Germanic übermensch who is obsessed with militarism and dominance. If values don't grow out of human nature, then 'all is permitted'. |
| p.92 | 7080 | Metaphysics divided the old unified Greek world into two | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche famously defines metaphysics as the division of one world into two; the unity of the mythical pre-philosophical experience of the world is sundered, with Plato, into being and seeming, reality and appearance, supersensible and sensible. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro | |||
| A reaction: (Critchley doesn't give a reference; Idea 2860 is close). This is the discredited status that metaphysics gradually acquired after Kant, but I see modern metaphysics as reuniting human thought by digging down to the foundations to reveal roots and links. |
| p.261 | 6869 | Nietzsche thinks the human condition is to overcome and remake itself | |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche thinks that the human condition is precisely to overcome itself; we continually remake ourselves. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886]) by Keith Ansell Pearson - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.261 | |||
| A reaction: This is why I think of Nietzsche as a straightforwardly existentialist philosopher. There is a crucial distinction between 'remaking' ourselves and 'realising all our possibilities'. The latter seems right. Which view did Nietzsche take? |
| Pref | p.-7 | 1568 | Nietzsche felt that Plato's views downgraded the human body and its brevity of life |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche believed that by elevating the importance of the mind, Plato downplayed the wonders of the body, and by searching for a timeless Truth he degraded the indisputable fact of human temporality. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], Pref) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason Prol. X | |||
| A reaction: Both ideas are very important. The second is widely misunderstood. Nietzsche was not a denier of truth. He asked us to scrutinise the role and value we assign to truth. |
| Pref | p.14 | 2860 | The most boring and dangerous of all errors is Plato's invention of pure spirit and goodness |
| Full Idea: The worst, most wearisomely protracted and most dangerous of all errors hitherto has been a dogmatist's error, namely Plato's invention of pure spirit and the good in itself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], Pref) | |||
| A reaction: A landmark observation about the history of philosophy. Imagine if all the Aristotle had survived, but all the Plato had been lost. |
| Pref | p.14 | 2867 | Christianity is Platonism for the people |
| Full Idea: Christianity is Platonism for the people. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], Pref) |
| §001 | p.15 | 11090 | Why do we want truth, rather than falsehood or ignorance? The value of truth is a problem |
| Full Idea: What really is it in us that wants 'the truth'? ...Granted we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth stepped before us. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §001) | |||
| A reaction: I think this is one of the great moments in philosophy, when something that has been taken for granted, as a kind of mantra, is suddenly looked in the face and challenged. Truth at all costs? What sacrifices would you make for truth? |
| §004 | p.17 | 20140 | We shouldn't object to a false judgement, if it enhances and preserves life |
| Full Idea: The falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement. To what extent is it life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving. Our fundamental tendency is to assert that our falsest judgements are the most indispensable. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §004) | |||
| A reaction: This is the standard objection to pragmatism, that what is false may still be useful, and that clever blighter Nietzsche embraces the idea! |
| §006 | p.19 | 7834 | Great philosophies are confessions by the author, growing out of moral intentions |
| Full Idea: It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author, and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir, ...with moral intentions being the real germ of its life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §006) | |||
| A reaction: This attitude is what places Nietzsche as the parent of post-modernism, and is the reason why most 'continental' philosophers seem to have given up the attempt to simply reason about life. It is anti-Enlightenment, and it is wicked. |
| §006 | p.20 | 20355 | The ranking of a person's innermost drives reveals their true nature |
| Full Idea: To know 'who he is', we must know the order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relative to one another. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §006) | |||
| A reaction: This is clearly an essentialist view of a person, as having a 'nature', which is 'inner', and which we can try to specify. Ranking drives and values seems a good proposal for getting at it. I'm also intrigued by what people find interesting. |
| §009 | p.20 | 2868 | Nature is totally indifferent, so you should try to be different from it, not live by it |
| Full Idea: You Stoics want to "live according to nature"? Oh you noble Stoics, what fraudulent words! Nature is prodigal and indifferent beyond measure - how could you live by such indifference? Living is wanting to be other than nature. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §009) | |||
| A reaction: I think this is simply indicative of the slide from optimism to pessimism about nature in the intervening centuries. Stoics thought nature rational. See 'King Lear' for the transition. |
| §017 | p.28 | 2291 | A thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want |
| Full Idea: A thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §017) | |||
| A reaction: A wonderful remark (which I have since found in Schopenhauer). I don't see how the most enthusiastic free will libertarian can deny it. |
| §021 | p.32 | 2871 | Wanting 'freedom of will' is wanting to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by one's own hair |
| Full Idea: The desire for 'freedom of will' is nothing less than the desire to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by one's own hair. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §021) |
| §023 | p.36 | 20381 | It is psychology which reveals the basic problems |
| Full Idea: Psychology is now once again the road to the fundamental problems. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §023) | |||
| A reaction: This may become the epigraph of my great book, which will have as working title 'The Psychology of Metaphysics'. If you trawl through this collection, you will see where I am going! (A tough job, but easier than reading Hegel). |
| §032 | p.44 | 2872 | In the earliest phase of human history only consequences mattered |
| Full Idea: Throughout the longest part of history ('prehistoric times') the value or non-value of an action was derived from its consequences. …but now men are unanimous that the value of an action is in the intention behind it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §032) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be Kant's fault. No one thinks that a reckless or malicios action is innocent if no actual harm results. |
| §056 | p.64 | 20137 | The great person engages wholly with life, and is happy to endlessly relive the life they created |
| Full Idea: There is an ideal ...of the most exuberant, most living and most world-affirming man, who has not only learned to get on and treat with all that was and is, but who wants to have it again as it was and is to all eternity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §056) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be the main point of the idea of eternal recurrence. Could we inculcate this vision into the teenagers of our nation - that they should each try to design for themselves a life which they would be happy to endlessly repeat? Hm. |
| §062 | p.69 | 2874 | Man is the animal whose nature has not yet been fixed |
| Full Idea: Man is the animal whose nature has not yet been fixed. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §062) |
| §153 | p.85 | 2875 | That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil |
| Full Idea: That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §153) | |||
| A reaction: He is referring to the conventional morality of his contemporary society. Nietzsche clearly thought that actions motivated by love are intrinsically good. (Apart from murders by the jealous!). |
| §157 | p.85 | 2876 | The thought of suicide is a great reassurance on bad nights |
| Full Idea: The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §157) |
| §186 | p.91 | 2877 | Morality becomes a problem when we compare many moralities |
| Full Idea: The real problems of morality come into view only if we compare many moralities. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §186) |
| §187 | p.92 | 2859 | The idea of the categorical imperative is just that we should all be very obedient |
| Full Idea: What does the claim that there exists in us a categorical imperative say of the man who asserts it? …that 'what is worthy of respect in me is that I know how to obey - and things ought to be no different with you'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §187) |
| §192 | p.97 | 2878 | We see an approximation of a tree, not the full detail |
| Full Idea: We do not see a tree exactly and entire with regard to its leaves, branches, colour and shape; it is so much easier for us to see an approximation of a tree. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §192) |
| §198 | p.101 | 20134 | Moralities extravagantly address themselves to 'all', by falsely generalising |
| Full Idea: All moralities are baroque and unreasonable ...because they address themselves to 'all', because they generalise where one must not generalise. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §198) | |||
| A reaction: 'Particularism' is a recent label, but one finds passing remarks from many earlier philosophers which support that approach to ethics. No one was ever more opposed to strict moral rules than Nietzsche. |
| §201 | p.104 | 2879 | In ancient Rome pity was considered neither good nor bad |
| Full Idea: An act of pity was during the finest age of Rome considered neither good nor bad. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §201) |
| §203 | p.88 | 22394 | Democracy diminishes mankind, making them mediocre and lowering their value |
| Full Idea: To us the democratic movement is ...a form of decay, namely the diminution, of man, making him mediocre and lowering his value. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §203), quoted by Philippa Foot - Nietzsche: the Revaluation of Values p.88 | |||
| A reaction: It is not clear how a society of natural aristocrats followed by sheep would increase the value of mankind. Nor if the talented people are given total freedom, and the rest of us are servants. The value of humanity cannot reside in a few individuals. |
| §203 | p.109 | 2880 | The greatest possibilities in man are still unexhausted |
| Full Idea: The greatest possibilities in man are still unexhausted. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §203) |
| §228 | p.138 | 2881 | Virtue has been greatly harmed by the boringness of its advocates |
| Full Idea: May I be forgiven for the discovery that 'virtue' has been harmed by nothing more than it has been by the boringness of its advocates. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §228) |
| §257 | p.173 | 20139 | Only aristocratic societies can elevate the human species |
| Full Idea: Every elevation of the type 'man' has thitherto been the work of an aristocratic society - and so it will always be: a society which believes in a long scale of orders of rank and differences of worth between man and man, and needs slavery in some sense. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §257) | |||
| A reaction: The aim of 'elevating the type "man"' does not figure in works of political philosophy very much! I doubt whether one could base a political party on the idea, and win a general election. Could the people still be sold the idea of aristocracy? |
| §258 | p.174 | 20373 | A healthy aristocracy has no qualms about using multitudes of men as instruments |
| Full Idea: A good and healthy aristocracy ...accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of innumerable men who for its sake have to be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §258) | |||
| A reaction: Something similar might be said of a democracy - that a slavelike workforce is needed to create the great universal goods we all want and need. Do the aristocrats want sacrifices for great art, or for wild parties and fox hunting? |
| §260 | p.176 | 2882 | Morality originally judged people, and actions only later on |
| Full Idea: Designation of moral values was everywhere first applied to human beings, and only later and derivatively to actions. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §260) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a great expert on ethics in the ancient world, so you should trust him on this one. In ordinary life assessment of people is what counts. Actions are for law courts. |
| §260 | p.176 | 2883 | Noble people see themselves as the determiners of values |
| Full Idea: The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §260) | |||
| A reaction: So do criminals |
| §261 | p.178 | 2884 | The morality of slaves is the morality of utility |
| Full Idea: Slave morality is essentially the morality of utility. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §261) |
| §284 | p.195 | 20382 | The four virtues are courage, insight, sympathy, solitude |
| Full Idea: To remain master of one's four virtues: courage, insight, sympathy, solitude. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §284) | |||
| A reaction: Compare this with 'Daybreak (Dawn)' 556. Solitude is the surprising addition, defended as the urge to 'cleanliness', when since humanity is 'unclean'. |
| §287 | p.196 | 2885 | The noble soul has reverence for itself |
| Full Idea: The noble soul has reverence for itself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §287) |
| 1886 | Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 |
| 1[056] | p.274 | 23208 | Caesar and Napoleon point to the future, when they pursue their task regardless of human sacrifice |
| Full Idea: In nature's such as Caesar and Napoleon we intuit something of a 'disinterested' laboring on one's marble, regardless of any sacrifice of human beings. The future of the highest human beings lies on here: to bear responsibility and not collapse under it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[056]) | |||
| A reaction: Hideous. Nietzsche at his absolute worst. You would think there was some wonderful higher good to which they were leading the human race, when they just strike me as people who liked fighting, and adored winning. |
| 1[058] | p.275 | 23209 | Each of our personal drives has its own perspective |
| Full Idea: From the standpoint of each of our fundamental drives there is a different perspectival assessment of all events and experiences. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[058]) | |||
| A reaction: Revealing. Perspectives are not just each individual person's viewpoint, but something more fine-grained than that. Our understanding and response are ambiguous, because we ourselves are intrinsically ambiguous. Super-relativism! |
| 1[114] | p.286 | 23210 | That all events are necessary does not mean they are compelled |
| Full Idea: The absolute necessity of all events contains nothing of a compulsion. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[114]) | |||
| A reaction: I like to look for necessity-makers behind necessities. So if the event is not necessary because of its cause, where does it come from? Is it that the whole sequence is a unified necessity? |
| 1[115] | p.287 | 23211 | Events are just interpretations of groups of appearances |
| Full Idea: There is no event in itself. What happens is a group of appearances selected and summarised by an interpreting being. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[115]) | |||
| A reaction: Since innumerable events are nested within one another, such as the events at a carnival, this is obviously true. A primitive 'Kim event' (an object changes a property) might have objective existence. Carnivals happen, though. |
| 1[120] | p.287 | 23212 | A text has many interpretations, but no 'correct' one |
| Full Idea: The same text allows innumerable interpretations: there is no 'correct' interpretation. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[120]) | |||
| A reaction: It is hard to defend a 'correct' interpretation, but I think it is obvious to students of literature that some interpretations are very silly, such as reading things allegorically when there was no such intention. |
| 2[063] | p.332 | 23213 | The greatest drive of life is to discharge strength, rather than preservation |
| Full Idea: Something that lives wants above all to discharge its strength: 'preservation' is only one of the consequences of this. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 2[063]) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to fit a dynamic man like Nietzsche, rather than someone who opts for a quiet and comfortable life. |
| 2[101] | p.352 | 23214 | For the strongest people, nihilism gives you wings! |
| Full Idea: In the hands of the strongest every kind of pessimism and nihilism becomes only one more hammer and tool with which one mounts a new pair of wings on oneself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 2[101]) | |||
| A reaction: Not sure how this works. Why is great strength needed? Strength implies forceful overcoming. The wings come from rejecting nihilism, but why does that need strength? Aren't there people with wings who never even thought of nihilism? |
| 34[025] | p.6 | 23183 | Different abilities are needed for living in an incomplete and undogmatic system |
| Full Idea: There is an entirely different strength and mobility to maintaning oneself in an incomplete system, with free, open vistas, than in a dogmatic world. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[025]) | |||
| A reaction: This is like Keats's 'negative capability' - the ability to live in a state of uncertainty. I'm a fan of attempts to create a philosophical system, but dogmatism would seem to be the death of such a project. How would you live with your system? Nice. |
| 34[046] | p.11 | 23184 | The mind is a simplifying apparatus |
| Full Idea: The intellect and the senses are above all a simplifying apparatus. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[046]) | |||
| A reaction: Very plausible, and not an idea I have met elsewhere. There's a PhD here for someone. It fits with my view as universals in language (which is most of language), which capture diverse things by ironing out their differences. |
| 34[058] | p.15 | 23186 | Numbers enable us to manage the world - to the limits of counting |
| Full Idea: Numbers are our major means of making the world manageable. We comprehend as far as we can count, i.e. as far as a constancy can be perceived. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[058]) | |||
| A reaction: I don't agree with 'major', but it is a nice thought. The intermediate concept is a 'unit', which means identifying something as a 'thing', which is how we seem to grasp the world. So to what extent do we comprehend the infinite. Enter Cantor… |
| 34[063] | p.15 | 23187 | Whatever their origin, concepts survive by being useful |
| Full Idea: The most useful concepts have survived: however falsely they may have originated. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[063]) | |||
| A reaction: The germ of both pragmatism, and of meaning-as-use, here. The alternative views must be that the concepts are accurate or true, or that they are simply a matter of whim, maintained by authority. |
| 34[083] | p.21 | 23188 | Bad writers use shapeless floating splotches of concepts |
| Full Idea: Bad writers have only shapeless floating splotches of concepts in their heads. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[083]) | |||
| A reaction: Under 'conceptual analyis' not because he analyses concepts, but because he recognises their foundation importance in philosophy. I get more irritated by unchallenged concepts than by drifting concepts. Writer must know and challenge their key concepts. |
| 34[086] | p.23 | 23189 | Concepts are rough groups of simultaneous sensations |
| Full Idea: Concepts are more or less definite groups of sensations that arrive together. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[086]) | |||
| A reaction: I like this because I favour accounts of concepts which root them in experience, and largely growing unthinking out of communcal experience. Nietzsche is very empirical here. Hume would probably agree. |
| 34[087] | p.24 | 23190 | Consciousness is our awareness of our own mental life |
| Full Idea: We have a double brain: our capacity to will, to feel and to think of our willing, feeling, thinking ourselves is what we summarise with the word 'consciousness'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[087]) | |||
| A reaction: Pretty much the modern HOT (higher order thought) theory of consciousness. Higher order thought distinguishes us from the other animals, but I think they too are probably conscious, so I don't agree. Why is level 2 conscious of level 1? |
| 34[131] | p.37 | 23191 | Minds have an excluding drive to scare things off, and a selecting one to filter facts |
| Full Idea: In our conscious intellect there must be an excluding drive that scares things away, a selecting one, which only permits certain facta to present themselves. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |||
| A reaction: I like this because he is endorsing the idea that philosophy needs faculties, which may not match the views of psychologists and neuroscientists. Quite nice to think of faculties as drives. |
| 34[131] | p.37 | 23192 | Concepts don’t match one thing, but many things a little bit |
| Full Idea: A concept is an invention that doesn't correspond entirely to anything; but to many things a little bit. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to cover some concepts quite well, but others not at all. What else does 'square' correspond to? |
| 34[131] | p.38 | 23193 | Napoleon was very focused, and rightly ignored compassion |
| Full Idea: With Napoleon only the essential instincts of humanity came into consideration during his calculations, and he had a right not to take notice of the exceptional ones e.g. of compassion. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |||
| A reaction: Napoleon was notoriously indifferent to casualties, and I find it depressing that Nietzsche supports him. Napoleon brought misery to Europe for nearly twenties, mainly because he loved winning battles. Nothing über about that. |
| 34[203] | p.60 | 23194 | People feel united as a nation by one language, but then want a common ancestry and history |
| Full Idea: People who speak one language and read the same newspapers today call themselves 'nations', and also want much too eagerly to be of common ancestry and history. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[203]) | |||
| A reaction: This sort of nationalism is still with us, as white supremacy, and as history as mythology. But we can't just shake off a sense of which gene pools we come from, and which lines of history are our personal inheritance. |
| 34[247] | p.73 | 23195 | Laws of nature are actually formulas of power relations |
| Full Idea: The alleged 'laws of nature' are formulas for power relationships… | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[247]) | |||
| A reaction: Love it. This is precisely the powers ontology of modern philosophy of science. His Will to Power is not often recognised as closely related to this view. |
| 34[249] | p.73 | 23196 | Logic is a fiction, which invents the view that one thought causes another |
| Full Idea: The model of a complete fiction is logic. Here a thinking is made up where a thought is posited as the cause of another thought. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[249]) | |||
| A reaction: He could almost be referring to Frege's Third Realm. Most hard core analytic philosophers seem to think that propositions have tight logical relationships which are nothing to do with the people who think them. |
| 34[249] | p.74 | 23197 | Memory is essential, and is only possible by means of abbreviation signs |
| Full Idea: Experience is only possible with the help of memory; memory is only possible by virtue of an abbreviation of an intellectual event as a sign. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[249]) | |||
| A reaction: My memory of a town is not formed as a sign, but as a bunch of miscellaneous fragments about it. I think mental files gives a better account of this than do 'signs'. |
| 34[51] | p.2 | 23185 | In chemistry every substance pushes, and thus creates new substances |
| Full Idea: In chemistry is revealed that every substance pushes its force as far as it can, then a third something emerges. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[51]) | |||
| A reaction: This is the ontology of powers as the basis of science, of which I am a fan. It is Nietzsche's Will to Power in action, which is often mistakenly taken to only refer to human affairs. |
| 35[02] | p.80 | 23198 | Aesthetics can be more basic than morality, in our pleasure in certain patterns of experience |
| Full Idea: Some of the aesthetic valuations are more fundamental than the moral ones e.g. the pleasure in what is ordered, surveyable, limited, in repetition. The logical, arithmetical and geometrical good feelings form the ground floor of aesthetic valuations. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[02]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche's originality is so striking because his novel suggestions are always plausible. Lots of modern philosophers (especially, I fear, in the continental tradition) throw out startling ideas which then fail on closer inspection. |
| 35[05] | p.81 | 23199 | What is the search for truth if it isn't moral? |
| Full Idea: What is searching for truth, truthfulness, honesty if not something moral? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[05]) | |||
| A reaction: Feels right to me. It might be an effect of the virtue of respect. If you respect a person you tell them the truth (assuming they want the truth). Lying to someone is a sort of contempt. |
| 35[22] | p.87 | 23200 | The controlling morality of aristocracy is the desire to resemble their ancestors |
| Full Idea: The foundation of all aristocracies …is to resemble the ancestors as much as possible, which serves as the controlling morality: mourning at the thought of change and variation. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[22]) | |||
| A reaction: This makes sense of the permanent residence of the family, full of portraits and family trees. Aristocrats preserve records of their predecessors, in a way that most of us don't, going back before grandparents. |
| 35[35] | p.94 | 23201 | The 'I' does not think; it is a construction of thinking, like other useful abstractions |
| Full Idea: I do not grant to the metaphysicians that the 'I' is what thinks: on the contrary I take the I itself as a construction thinking, of the same rank as 'material',' thing', 'substance', 'purpose', 'number': therefore only as a regulative fiction. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[35]) | |||
| A reaction: Ah. I have always defended the Self, the thing that is in charge when the mind is directed to something. I suddenly see that this is compatible with the Self not being the thinker! It is just the willer, and the controller of the searchlight. Self = will? |
| 37[02] | p.139 | 23202 | Like all philosophers, I love truth |
| Full Idea: I, too, love truth, like all philosophers. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[02]) | |||
| A reaction: Please pay attention to this remark! His perspectivalism is not a denial of truth. It is an epistemological phenomenon, not a metaphysical one. The perspectives are the nearest we can get to truth. Humanity therefore needs teamwork. |
| 37[08] | p.143 | 23203 | The great question is approaching, of how to govern the earth as a whole |
| Full Idea: It is approaching, irrefutably, hesitatingly, terrible as fate, the great task and fate: how should the earth as a whole be governed? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[08]) | |||
| A reaction: Two issues have accelerated the question, though we have yet to properly face it. One is the incredible increase in military destructiveness, and other is the damage to the planet caused by the relentless pursuit of wealth. |
| 37[11] | p.148 | 23204 | To be someone you need property, and wanting more is healthy |
| Full Idea: Property owners are to a man of one belief: 'you have to own something to be something'. But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I would add 'you have to want more than you have in order to become more'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[11]) | |||
| A reaction: An odd idea from someone who spent his later years living in one room in a guest house. The context of this is a rejection of socialism. The love of and need for property and possessions must be taken into account in any politics. |
| 38[01] | p.155 | 23205 | Thought starts as ambiguity, in need of interpretation and narrowing |
| Full Idea: A thought in the shape in which it comes is an ambiguous sign that needs interpretation, more precisely, needs an arbitrary narrowing-down and limitation, until it finally becomes unambiguous. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 38[01]) | |||
| A reaction: This is exactly my view of propositions, as mental events. Introspect your thinking process. Track the progress from the first glimmer of a thought to its formulation in a finished sentence. Language, unlike propositions, can be ambiguous. |
| 40[09] | p.187 | 23206 | Schematic minds think thoughts are truer if they slot into a scheme |
| Full Idea: There are schematic minds, those who hold a thought-complex to be truer if it can be sketched into previously drafted schemata or categorical tables. There are countless self-deceptions in this area: nearly all the great 'systems' belong here. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 40[09]) | |||
| A reaction: Why 'nearly all'? Aristotle might be a candidate for such a person. Leibniz, perhaps. Nietzsche identified with Becoming and Heraclitus, as opposed to Being and Parmenides. |
| 40[53] | p.208 | 23207 | Appearance is the sole reality of things, to which all predicates refer |
| Full Idea: Appearance as I understand it is the actual and single reality of things - that which first merits all existing predicates. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 40[53]) | |||
| A reaction: This is the view espoused by John Stuart Mill (a fact which would shock Nietzsche!). Elsewhere he laughs at the concept of the thing-in-itself as a fiction. |
| 1887 | On the Genealogy of Morals |
| Pre f§3 | p.46 | 3793 | We must question the very value of moral values |
| Full Idea: We need a critique of moral values; the value of these values themselves must just be called in question. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], Pre f§3) | |||
| A reaction: But we must start somewhere with values, to avoid an infinite regress. |
| Pref §5 | p.19 | 4407 | Plato, Spinoza and Kant are very different, but united in their low estimation of pity |
| Full Idea: Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant are four spirits very different from one another, but united in one thing: their low estimation of pity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], Pref §5) | |||
| A reaction: Plato is no surprise, as virtually no Greeks value pity. Spinoza and Kant are interesting. Presumably Kant's 'contractualism' places respect far above pity, and is theoretical neglect of animals would fit. Remember Nietzsche embraced a horse in Turin. |
| I | p.194 | 3259 | Nietzsche rejects impersonal morality, and asserts the idea of living well |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's rejection of impersonal morality is an assertion of the dominance of the ideal of living well. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I) by Thomas Nagel - The View from Nowhere X.2 |
| I.§01 | p.11 | 23715 | Psychologists should be brave and proud, and prefer truth to desires, even when it is ugly |
| Full Idea: I hope [psychologists] are actually brave, generous, proud animals, who know how to control their own pleasure and pain and are taught to sacrifice desirability to truth, even a bitter, ugly, unchristian, immoral truth - Because there are such truths. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§01) | |||
| A reaction: A nice expression of Nietzsche's values, which makes truth central, contrary to the widespread modern view that he was the high priest of relativism. If you think that, read him more carefully. |
| I.§02 | p.25 | 4408 | The concept of 'good' was created by aristocrats to describe their own actions |
| Full Idea: The judgement 'good' did not first originate with those to whom goodness was shown! Rather it was the 'good' themselves, that is to say the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded who established themselves and their action as good. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§02) | |||
| A reaction: This may be right, but not very profound. Virtually all concepts are created by the most educated classes. The first recipient of charity may not have had the concept, but they would have been gobsmacked by the novelty. |
| I.§02 | p.26 | 4409 | Only the decline of aristocratic morality led to concerns about "egoism" |
| Full Idea: It was only when aristocratic value judgements declined that the whole antithesis of "egoistic" and "unegoistic" obtruded itself more and more on the human conscience. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§02) | |||
| A reaction: But Aristotle, who is no aristocrat, has a balanced and sensible view of 'egoism', where it isn't the patronising arrogance that Nietzsche seems to like, but a proper concern with one's own character. |
| I.§07 | p.33 | 4410 | The truly great haters in world history have always been priests |
| Full Idea: The truly great haters in world history have always been priests. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§07) | |||
| A reaction: Wicked, but it has a lot of truth. Priests have a lot to defend, and a lot of reasons for feeling threatened. |
| I.§10 | p.22 | 23716 | A strong rounded person soon forgets enemies, misfortunes, and even misdeeds |
| Full Idea: To be unable to take his enemies, his misfortunes and even his misdeeds seriously for long - that is the sign of strong, rounded natures with a superabundance of power. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§10) | |||
| A reaction: An aspect of the 'higher man' that I don't recall being mentioned elsewhere. I basically approve of this, if it means not holding grudges, and living for the future rather than for the past. |
| I.§12 | p.25 | 23717 | Modern nihilism is now feeling tired of mankind |
| Full Idea: The sight of man now makes us tired - what is nihilism today if it is not that? …We are tired of man… | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§12) | |||
| A reaction: That is close to Hume's nihilist, who would destroy the world to protect his own finger from a scratch. The actor George Sanders committed suicide because he was bored. Don't ever think that Nietzsche was a nihilist, just because he mentions it a lot! |
| I.§13 | p.26 | 23718 | If we say birds of prey could become lambs, that makes them responsible for being birds of prey |
| Full Idea: Scientists …do not defend any belief more strongly than that the strong are free to be weak, and the birds of prey are free to be lambs: - in this way, they gain the right to make the birds of prey responsible for being birds of prey. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§13) | |||
| A reaction: This is a flat rejection of the Sartrean idea that we can what sort of person we want to be. He cares about birds of prey, but also lambs can't become eagles. I would say that adolescents have a reasonable degree of choice about what they will become. |
| I.§13 | p.45 | 4411 | It is a delusion to separate the man from the deed, like the flash from the lightning |
| Full Idea: Just as the popular mind separates the lightning from its flash and takes the latter for a 'action', so they separate strength from expressions of strength, but there is no such substratum; the deed is everything. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§13) | |||
| A reaction: Of course, there is no reason why an analysis should not separate the doer and the deed (to explain, for example, a well-meaning fool), but it is a blunder to think of a human action as a merely physical event. |
| I.§17 note | p.56 | 2930 | The main aim of philosophy must be to determine the order of rank among values |
| Full Idea: The future task of the philosophers is the solution of the problem of value, the determination of the order of rank among values. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], I.§17 note) | |||
| A reaction: 'Determine' is presumably either a power struggle, or needs criteria by which to do the judging. |
| II.§01 | p.35 | 23719 | Forgetfulness is a strong positive ability, not mental laziness |
| Full Idea: Forgetfulness is not just a vis inertiae, as superficial people believe, but is rather an active ability to suppress, positive in the strongest sense of the word. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§01) | |||
| A reaction: It is unimpressive when people remember small slights and grievances for a long time - and even being owed small sums - so the ability to forget such things is admirable. But wilfully forgetting some things is obviously shameful. |
| II.§07 | p.69 | 4414 | Philosophers invented "free will" so that our virtues would be permanently interesting to the gods |
| Full Idea: The philosophers invented "free will" - absolute human spontaneity in good and evil - to furnish a right to the idea that the interest of the gods in man, in human virtue, could never be exhausted. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§07) | |||
| A reaction: Wonderfully outrageous suggestion! If we had true metaphysical 'absolute' free will, we would be much more interesting, and have a much higher status in the cosmos. Nietzsche is probably right. |
| II.§08 | p.70 | 4415 | Guilt and obligation originated in the relationship of buying and selling, credit and debt |
| Full Idea: The feeling of guilt, of personal obligation, had its origin in the oldest and most primitive personal relationship, that between buyer and seller, between creditor and debtor. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§08) | |||
| A reaction: In other words, lofty Kantian ideals started life in the grubby world of the Hobbesian social contract, and self-seeking has been disguised by idealism. Too harsh on Kant, who explains why contracts have force, not just convenience. |
| II.§08 | p.70 | 4416 | Basic justice is the negotiation of agreement among equals, and the imposition of agreement |
| Full Idea: Justice on the elementary level is good will among parties of approximately equal power to come to terms with one another, and to compel parties of lesser power to reach a settlement among themselves. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§08) | |||
| A reaction: This pinpoints a key problem with the social contract as a moral theory - that it requires equals, and recognises only terror of superiors, and indifference to useless inferiors who have nothing to offer (paraplegics and animals). |
| II.§13 | p.80 | 4417 | Only that which has no history is definable |
| Full Idea: Only that which has no history is definable. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§13) | |||
| A reaction: Too subtle to evaluate! It sounds as if it could be right, that some things are definable, but when the accretions of human history are interwoven into an identity, we can forget it. |
| II.§14 | p.54 | 23720 | Punishment makes people harder, more alienated, and hostile |
| Full Idea: On the whole, punishment makes men harder and colder, it concentrates, it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power to resist. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§14) | |||
| A reaction: If the school system involves routine harsh punishments, that means that the whole population ends up in that state. I would have thought that this was an obvious truth about punishment, but no one seems to want to face up to it. |
| II.§17 | p.86 | 20142 | The state begins with brutal conquest of a disorganised people, not with a 'contract' |
| Full Idea: Some pack of blond beasts of prey, on a war footing, unscrupulously lays its dreadful paws on a populace which is shapeless. In this way the 'state' began on earth. I think I have dispensed with the fantasy which has it begin with a 'contract'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§17) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] It is certainly likely that a tribe which got itself well organised and focused on some end would achieve total dominance over other tribes that just focus on food. |
| II.§17 | p.86 | 4418 | A masterful and violent person need have nothing to do with contracts |
| Full Idea: He who can command, he who is "master", he who is violent in act and bearing - what has he to do with contracts! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§17) | |||
| A reaction: The persistent problem with social contract theory is that those much stronger or much weaker seem to have no interest in morality at all, and yet they can all have standards of behaviour. |
| II.§19 | p.60 | 23721 | Old tribes always felt an obligation to the earlier generations, and the founders |
| Full Idea: Within the original tribal association the living generation always acknowledged a legal obligation towards the earlier generation, and in particular towards the earliest. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], II.§19) | |||
| A reaction: This is still a factor in modern politics, though the people remember are either military heroes or the great figures of a particular political movement. We remember the big artists and personalities, but don't feel obligated to them. |
| III.§07 | p.107 | 20129 | All animals strive for the ideal conditions to express their power, and hate any hindrances |
| Full Idea: Every animal instinctively strives for an optimum of favourable conditions under which it can expend all its strength and achieve its maximal feeling of power; every animal abhors ...every hindrance that obstructs this path to the optimum. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§07) | |||
| A reaction: This became the lynchpin of Nietzsche's account of the source of values. It is a highly naturalistic view, fitting it into evolutionary theory (thought running deeper than that), so I have a lot of sympathy with the view. |
| III.§08 | p.110 | 4419 | People who think in words are orators rather than thinkers, and think about facts instead of thinking facts |
| Full Idea: Whoever thinks in words thinks as an orator and not as a thinker (it shows that he does not think facts, but only in relation to facts). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§08) | |||
| A reaction: Good. It is certainly not true that we have to think in words, or else animals wouldn't think. Good thinking should focus on reality, and be too fast for words to keep up. |
| III.§12 | p.87 | 23722 | Objectivity is not disinterestedness (impossible), but the ability to switch perspectives |
| Full Idea: 'Objectivity' should be understood not as 'contemplation without interest' (a non-concept and an absurdity), but as having in our power the ability to engage and disengage our 'pros' and 'cons'; we can use the difference in perspectives for knowledge. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§12) | |||
| A reaction: Note that he will use perspectives to achieve knowledge. The idea that Perspectivalism is mere relativism is labelled as 'extreme' in Idea 4486. He is right that objectivity is a mental capacity and achievement of individuals. |
| III.§12 | p.119 | 4420 | There is only 'perspective' seeing and knowing, and so the best objectivity is multiple points of view |
| Full Idea: There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective "knowing", and the more different eyes we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity", be. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§12) | |||
| A reaction: A very perceptive statement of the most plausible and sophisticated version of relativism. It is hard to see how we could distinguish multiple viewpoints from pure objectivity. |
| III.§24 | p.151 | 20143 | Scientific knowledge is nothing without a prior philosophical 'faith' |
| Full Idea: Strictly speaking there is no knowledge [science] without presuppositions; a philosophy, a 'faith', must always be there first of all, for knowledge to win from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§24) | |||
| A reaction: He sees philosophers as the creators of this faith, and laughs at anyone who tries to set philosophy on a scientific basis. |
| III.§24 | p.152 | 4421 | Philosophers have never asked why there is a will to truth in the first place |
| Full Idea: Both the earliest and most recent philosophers are all oblivious of how much the will to truth itself first requires justification: here there is a gap in every philosophy - how did this come about? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals [1887], III.§24) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to me a meta-philosophical question which will lead off into (quite interesting) cultural studies and (trite) evolutionary theory. Truth isn't a value, it is the biological function of brains. |
| 1887 | Writings from Late Notebooks |
| 01[114] | p.62 | 7149 | Comprehending everything is impossible, because it abolishes perspectives |
| Full Idea: 'Comprehending everything' - that would mean abolishing all perspectival relations, that would mean comprehending nothing, mistaking the nature of the knower. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[114]) | |||
| A reaction: The point here, I take it, is not just that there is too much to comprehend, but that comprehending is partly a subjective matter. Personally I am drawn to the opposite pole, expressed by Spinoza (Idea 4840). |
| 01[21] | p.55 | 7147 | Values are innate and inherited |
| Full Idea: Valuations are innate (despite Locke!), inherited. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[21]) | |||
| A reaction: This would conform with Charles Taylor's views (e.g. Idea 4002). But how are we sheep ever going to fall in with the values of our Superman when he arrives, if we are stuck with our own innate values? |
| 01[87] | p.61 | 7148 | The 'I' is a conceptual synthesis, not the governor of our being |
| Full Idea: The 'I' (which is not the same thing as the unitary government of our being!) is, after all, only a conceptual synthesis - thus there is no acting from 'egoism'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[87]) | |||
| A reaction: Compare Sartre in Idea 7116. Since I am inclined to define the self as the controller of the brain, I am intrigued by the remark in brackets. Presumably he considers the self to be a fiction, and that animals don't have one. I think, probably, animals do. |
| 02[103] | p.78 | 7157 | We think each thought causes the next, unaware of the hidden struggle beneath |
| Full Idea: On the table of our consciousness there appears a succession of thoughts, as if one thought were the cause of the next. But in fact we don't see the struggle going on under the table -- | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[103]) | |||
| A reaction: A brilliant thought. I am increasingly struck by my own lack of control over my 'trains' of thought. I am a slave to my own thinking. |
| 02[107] | p.79 | 7158 | Morality kills religion, because a Christian-moral God is unbelievable |
| Full Idea: Religions perish through belief in morality: the Christian-moral God is not tenable: hence 'atheism' - as if there could be no other kind of god. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[107]) | |||
| A reaction: This remark is mainly aimed at Christianity, which has become progressively more sentimental in its conception of God. When some great earthquake comes, this God is not plausible, where a tougher sort of God might be. |
| 02[110] | p.82 | 7159 | The only happiness is happiness with illusion |
| Full Idea: Happiness with existence is only possible as happiness with illusion. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[110]) | |||
| A reaction: A characteristically tough remark! It is, of course, indefeasible, because if you claim to have happiness without illusion, Nietzsche brands you as another fool. But why should a gradual stripping of illusion totally destroy happiness? |
| 02[13] | p.68 | 7150 | By developing herd virtues man fixes what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal' |
| Full Idea: Men's increasing morality allows them to fancy they can rise to the rank of 'gods', whereas in fact they sink; by cultivating the virtues by which a herd can flourish, they develop the herd animal, and 'fix' what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[13]) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] More than any other remark, this explains the sense of distress found in all of later Nietzsche. If he is right, it looks even more true now than in 1886, because of the globalisation of culture. I think he is right. |
| 02[13] | p.69 | 7151 | Courage, compassion, insight, solitude are the virtues, with courtesy a necessary vice |
| Full Idea: Our four cardinal virtues: courage, compassion, insight and solitude - they would be unbearable to themselves if they hadn't forged an alliance with a cheerful and mischievous vice called 'courtesy'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[13]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche was wonderfully wicked. I struggle (with Aristotle) to see how a naturally social creature can have solitude as a virtue. It is startling to see Nietzsche naming compassion as a virtue, but how ironic is the whole remark? |
| 02[144] | p.89 | 7160 | Christian belief is kept alive because it is soothing - the proof based on pleasure |
| Full Idea: It seems that Christian belief is to be kept alive precisely for the sake of its soothing effects; ...this hedonistic turn, the proof based on pleasure, is a symptom of decline. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[144]) | |||
| A reaction: The abolition of hell by the Anglican church in the 1990s is the last stage in this development. To be fair (and why not?), the Christian life demands a rather large effort, if it is to be lived properly, so it is a rather demanding sort of hedonism. |
| 02[150] | p.90 | 7161 | The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing' |
| Full Idea: The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[150]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche seems sympathetic to essentialism about natural laws (based on 'power'), but this is the classic rejection of Aristotelian essences, because they are unknowable or unprovable. Personally I think scientists are revealing essences. |
| 02[165] | p.93 | 7162 | Morality can only be upheld by belief in God and a 'hereafter' |
| Full Idea: Naivety: as if morality remained when the sanctioning God is gone. The 'hereafter' is absolutely necessary if belief in morality is to be upheld. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[165]) | |||
| A reaction: This is the 'good' and 'evil' of social values, not the natural values which accompany the life of any creature (see Idea 7136). Even with a God, it required the priests to interpret the morality and the sanctions, and they had their thumbs in the scales. |
| 02[165] | p.94 | 7163 | Morality is merely interpretations, which are extra-moral in origin |
| Full Idea: My main proposition: there are no moral phenomena, there is only a moral interpretation of those phenomena. This interpretation itself is of extra-moral origin. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[165]) | |||
| A reaction: The origin will, of course, be the 'will to power', which is the drive for survival, linking Nietzsche with sociobiology or evolutionary psychology. |
| 02[206] | p.99 | 7164 | Not feeling harnessed to a system of 'ends' is a wonderful feeling of freedom |
| Full Idea: What a sensation of freedom it is to feel, as we freed spirits feel, that we are not harnessed up to a system of 'ends'! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[206]) | |||
| A reaction: Given his view that we are utterly dominated by the 'will to power', I am beginning to wonder in what sense we could ever be 'free'. If my happiness is an 'illusion' (Idea 7159), then I retaliate by saying that his freedom is also an illusion. |
| 02[68] | p.71 | 7152 | With protoplasm ½+½=2, so the soul is not an indivisible monad |
| Full Idea: Along the guiding thread of the body. When protoplasm divides ½ + ½ does not = 1, but = 2. Thus the belief in the soul as monad becomes untenable. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[68]) | |||
| A reaction: This is presumably an anticipatory remark about the cutting of the corpus callosum (in the brain), which seems to cut a physical person into two people. Personally I always found the absolute unity of the mind or person implausible. |
| 02[87] | p.76 | 7154 | We can't use our own self to criticise our own capacity for knowledge! |
| Full Idea: A critique of our capacity to know is nonsensical: how should the tool be able to criticise itself when it can, precisely, only use itself for the critique? It can't even define itself! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[87]) | |||
| A reaction: I am inclined to answer that it seems impossible, but it happens. Thinking about ourselves is the hardest part of philosophy, but phenomenologists and others (starting with Descartes) have had an impressive crack at it. Nietzsche was good at it. |
| 02[87] | p.76 | 7153 | We can't be realists, because we don't know what being is |
| Full Idea: One would have to know what being is in order to decide whether this or that is real - but we don't know that. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[87]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche is a genius - he puts his finger on something which has always bothered me about realism, even though I call myself a 'realist'. Being and existence are utterly indefinable, and even incomprehensible, so what do we realists believe in? |
| 02[95] | p.78 | 7156 | Sense perceptions contain values (useful, so pleasant) |
| Full Idea: All sensory perceptions are entirely suffused with value judgements (useful or harmful - consequently pleasant or unpleasant). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[95]) | |||
| A reaction: This seems like a wonderful anticipation of modern neuroscience findings about emotion. It is a nice challenge to Hume's 'impressions' and Russell's 'logical atoms'. But knowledge is power, and we can strip off the values from the perceptions. |
| 02[95] | p.78 | 7155 | Consciousness exists to the extent that consciousness is useful |
| Full Idea: Consciousness exists to the extent that consciousness is useful. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[95]) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a great truth, first because it emphasises the necessity of giving an evolutionary (survival) explanation of consciousness, and also because it invites us to consider the 'extent' to which we are conscious of brain activity. |
| 04[7] | p.103 | 7165 | Virtue is wasteful, as it reduces us all to being one another's nurse |
| Full Idea: Nothing would be more expensive than virtue: for in the end it would give us the earth as an infirmary, and 'Everyone to be everyone else's nurse' would be the pinnacle of wisdom. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 04[7]) | |||
| A reaction: Once again, I think that Nietzsche does not understand Aristotelian virtue theory. This attacks Christian virtue (his bête noir), with its emphasis on compassion and humility. A truly virtuous person is more likely to be an artist/politician/philosopher. |
| 04[8] | p.104 | 7166 | Man is above all a judging animal |
| Full Idea: Man is above all a judging animal. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 04[8]) | |||
| A reaction: This seems awfully close to Aristotle's supposed claim that we are the 'rational animal' (though see Idea 6559). To me it implies that if judging is our proper function, then judging well is our highest virtue. The highest good for man is understanding. |
| 05[12] | p.107 | 7169 | Is the perspectival part of the essence, or just a relation between beings? |
| Full Idea: Fundamental question: whether the perspectival is part of the essence, and not just a form of regarding, a relation between various beings? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[12]) | |||
| A reaction: I don't personally understand how the perspectival could be part of the essence of anything. If everything is perspectival, then perspectives are limits, and essences are unknowable. It seems to me that we have learned a lot about essences. |
| 05[14] | p.108 | 7170 | 'Wisdom' attempts to get beyond perspectives, making it hostile to life |
| Full Idea: 'Wisdom' is an attempt to get beyond perspectival appraisals (i.e. beyond the 'wills to power'), a principle that is disintegratory and hostile to life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[14]) | |||
| A reaction: I just don't accept that there are no general truths, which are true beyond any 'perspectives'. One sensible person amidst a group of fools should not bow to their misguided perspectives. |
| 05[22] | p.110 | 7171 | Rationality is a scheme we cannot cast away |
| Full Idea: Thinking rationally is interpreting according to a scheme we cannot cast away. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[22]) | |||
| A reaction: We can turn the tables on this one: how could Nietzsche know that this is the case if he cannot criticise his own rationality? The brain is a truth machine, and truth is (mostly) vital for survival. |
| 05[3] | p.106 | 7167 | Words such as 'I' and 'do' and 'done to' are placed at the point where our ignorance begins |
| Full Idea: We place a word at the point where our ignorance begins - where we can't see any further, e.g. the word 'I', the words 'do' and 'done to': these may be the horizons of our knowledge, but they are not 'truths'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[3]) | |||
| A reaction: A nice contribution to the debate over whether our understanding is restricted to what we can say. Compare Ideas 2937 and 6870. Nietzsche seems to support Wittgenstein. I prefer Keith Ansell Pearson. |
| 05[7] | p.106 | 7168 | Modest people express happiness as 'Not bad' |
| Full Idea: The happiness whose proper name on earth the modest believe is: 'Well, not bad'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[7]) | |||
| A reaction: Alexei Sayle expresses it in the English slogan 'Mustn't grumble'. Nietzsche certainly had the English in mind. Nietzsche seems to have the romantic tendency to think that only something completely new and original can bring happiness. |
| 05[71].6 | p.118 | 7172 | Existence without meaning or goal or end, eternally recurring, is a terrible thought |
| Full Idea: Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or goal, but inevitably recurring, without any finale into nothingness: 'eternal recurrence'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[71].6) | |||
| A reaction: I take this in a positive spirit - that if you wish to live well you should create a life which you could endure and enjoy, even if it recurred eternally. But that might be rather conservative rather than exciting, if we always avoided giving offence. |
| 05[82] | p.121 | 7173 | Rights arise out of contracts, which need a balance of power |
| Full Idea: Rights originate only where there are contracts; but for there to be contracts, a certain balance of power must exist. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[82]) | |||
| A reaction: It is a notorious problem with contractual ethics that the weak have nothing to bargain with. Nietzsche's view would make the concept of animal rights almost incoherent, but we understand them, even if he would not have done. |
| 06[11] | p.124 | 7174 | Categories are not metaphysical truths, but inventions in the service of needs |
| Full Idea: The inventive force that thought up categories was working in the service of needs - security, quick comprehensibility using signs and sounds, means of abbreviation - 'substance', 'subject', 'being' etc are not metaphysical truths. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 06[11]) | |||
| A reaction: This is a relativism going right to the heart of thinking and planting bombs. And yet we happily translate Confucius, and they can translate Aristotle. I bet the aliens could translate and understand our philosophy. How, without similar categories? |
| 06[13] | p.124 | 7175 | Philosophers find it particularly hard to shake off belief in necessary categories |
| Full Idea: Philosophers, in particular, have the greatest difficulty in freeing themselves from the belief that the basic concepts and categories of reason belong without further ado to the realm of metaphysical certainties. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 06[13]) | |||
| A reaction: As usual with Nietzsche, if you make any attempt to disagree with this, you are merely proving his point. All of Nietzsche's philosophy is couched in traditional categories, even when he criticises them. Is 'will to power' a new category? |
| 07[1] | p.128 | 7176 | 'Purpose' is like the sun, where most heat is wasted, and a tiny part has 'purpose' |
| Full Idea: The case of every purposive action is like the supposed purposiveness of the sun's heat - the huge mass of it is wasted, and a part barely worth considering has 'purpose', has 'meaning'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[1]) | |||
| A reaction: A very nice metaphor for human life, where you might discern a purpose in certain large events, but you certainly won't find it in the myriad of small actions that make up nearly all of our existence. |
| 07[25] | p.134 | 7178 | The utility of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! |
| Full Idea: The utility of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[25]) | |||
| A reaction: This may be wishful thinking on Nietzsche's part, wanting the human mind to be free of its utility for survival, so that it can be focused on 'higher' things. We can explain by origin and purpose, but also by causal possibilities. |
| 07[25] | p.134 | 7179 | Survival might undermine an individual's value, or prevent its evolution |
| Full Idea: Something useful for maintaining the individual over time might be unfavourable to its strength and magnificence; what preserves the individual might simultaneously hold it fast and bring its evolution to a standstill. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[25]) | |||
| A reaction: He heads this 'Against Darwin', but I think Darwin could accommodate these observations, as he merely points out a mechanism, and makes not value judgements at all. |
| 07[25] | p.135 | 7180 | Darwin overestimates the influence of 'external circumstances' |
| Full Idea: Darwin absurdly overestimates the influence of 'external circumstances'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[25]) | |||
| A reaction: In some ways Nietzsche was just as bad as the Christians in his reluctance to face up to Darwin's idea. Does he really think that creatures evolve a certain way because they want to? Even fans of Nietzsche must bite the bullet of natural selection. |
| 07[48] | p.137 | 7181 | Pain shows the value of the damage, not what has been damaged |
| Full Idea: Intellectuality of pain: pain does not indicate what is momentarily damaged but what value the damage has with regard to the individual as a whole. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[48]) | |||
| A reaction: An interesting claim, but rather hard to substantiate. Boiling water on the back of a hand might be very painful, but not of huge consequence in terms of damage. The palm of the hand is much more important to us than the back. |
| 07[6] | p.132 | 7177 | Virtues from outside are dangerous, and they should come from within |
| Full Idea: The virtues are as dangerous as the vices, to the extent that one allows them to rule as authority and law from outside instead of generating them from within oneself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[6]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a romantic, who thought things only have worth if they are authentic, individual, autonomous, original. Existentialism is the last fling of romanticism, and expresses an adolescent yearning for 'freedom'. From what? |
| 07[60] | p.139 | 7182 | 'Perspectivism': the world has no meaning, but various interpretations give it countless meanings |
| Full Idea: Inasmuch as the word 'knowledge' has any meaning at all, the world is knowable: but it is variously interpretable; it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. 'Perspectivism'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[60]) | |||
| A reaction: This account sounds like Humean 'projectivism', espoused by Simon Blackburn - meanings are projected onto a meaningless world. If nearly all of our perspectives agreed, might that not be because they were all true? |
| 07[60] | p.139 | 7183 | 'Subjectivity' is an interpretation, since subjects (and interpreters) are fictions |
| Full Idea: 'Everything is subjective', you say: but that itself is an interpretation, for the 'subject' is not something given but a fiction added on, tucked behind. Even the interpreter behind the interpretation is a fiction, hypothesis. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[60]) | |||
| A reaction: How glorious to even suggest that the subjective account of knowledge is making too many assumptions! If modern students of philosophy were to meet Nietzsche, they would be reduced to the response of Cratylus (Idea 578). |
| 09[106] | p.161 | 7189 | Maybe there are only subjects, and 'objects' result from relations between subjects |
| Full Idea: The subject alone is demonstrable: hypothesis - that there are only subjects - that 'object' is only a kind of effect of subject upon subject...a mode of the subject. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[106]) | |||
| A reaction: This is an ultimate implication of 'perspectivism'. Elsewhere, though, (Idea 7183) he challenges the ontological status of 'subjects', suggesting that even they are purely fictional. Nietzsche wanted to relativism everything, but kept clutching lifebelts. |
| 09[27] | p.146 | 7185 | Replace the categorical imperative by the natural imperative |
| Full Idea: Replacement of the categorical imperative by the natural imperative. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[27]) | |||
| A reaction: This places Nietzsche rather firmly with evolutionary psychologists (who see morality in evolutionary terms), which he probably would not like. I just don't believe we are helpless victims of nature, and nor must we endorse what it asks of us. |
| 09[38] | p.148 | 7186 | There are no necessary truths, but something must be held to be true |
| Full Idea: What's necessary is that something must be held to be true; not that something is true. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[38]) | |||
| A reaction: This may be right, but it doesn't follow that the truths we label as 'necessary' are the ones that we have to believe, or even that we have to believe that our chosen beliefs are necessary rather than contingent. Why did we pick those beliefs? |
| 09[97] | p.158 | 7188 | Logic tries to understand the world according to a man-made scheme |
| Full Idea: Logic is the attempt to understand the real world according to a scheme of being that we have posited. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[97]) | |||
| A reaction: This is the ruthless relativist trying to relativise the holy-of-holies, pure logic. I don't believe it. Once you allow counting, identity and sets, based on types, (and why not?) then logic follows. |
| 10[109] | p.193 | 7193 | Virtue for everyone removes its charm of being exceptional and aristocratic |
| Full Idea: The preachers of virtue are its worst enemies. For they teach virtue as an ideal for everyone; they take from virtue the charm of the rare, the inimitable, the exceptional and unaverage - it aristocratic magic. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[109]) | |||
| A reaction: At last I think I have found why Nietzsche disliked Aristotle, who makes elementary 'phronesis' (practical reason) a sufficient intellectual endowment to achieve virtue, with no need of more than moderate wealth or power. I prefer Aristotle. |
| 10[167] | p.203 | 7194 | Experiencing a thing as beautiful is to experience it wrongly |
| Full Idea: To experience a thing as beautiful necessarily means experiencing it wrongly. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[167]) | |||
| A reaction: So much for 'beauty is truth' (Keats). I suppose I agree, for example, about a face. If you don't experience the beauty of a good melody, there is nothing else left to experience - no mundane truth that needs reporting. |
| 10[23] | p.181 | 7190 | Our values express an earlier era's conditions for survival and growth |
| Full Idea: The feeling of value is always antiquated, it expresses a much earlier era's conditions for survival and growth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[23]) | |||
| A reaction: Nice. I myself grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War. Have I ingested values that were created for that era, and are no longer required? |
| 10[87] | p.188 | 7191 | What does not kill us makes us stronger |
| Full Idea: What does not kill us makes us stronger. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[87]) | |||
| A reaction: A famous remark! Actually, of course, a very stressful human life tends to be much shorter than a comfortable one, but Nietzsche wouldn't equate strength with longevity. Nowadays we are all a bunch of softies. |
| 10[90] | p.189 | 7192 | Remove goodness and wisdom from our concept of God. Being the highest power is enough! |
| Full Idea: Let us remove the highest goodness from the concept of God, and likewise remove the highest wisdom, for which the vanity of the philosophers is to blame. No! God the highest power - that is enough! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[90]) | |||
| A reaction: Since everything is, apparently, 'will to power', then power must be the ideal. Why does Nietzsche want such a thing? As far as I can see, the greater seekers of power are idiots who have no idea what to do with it when the achieve it. |
| 11[122] | p.224 | 7199 | It is dishonest to invent a being containing our greatest values, thus ignoring why they exist and are valuable |
| Full Idea: It is the pinnacle of man's mendacity to think up a being as a beginning and 'in-itself', according to the yardstick of what he happens to find good, wise, powerful, valuable - and think away the whole causality by which they exist and have value. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[122]) | |||
| A reaction: I think most non-religious people feel that religion completely fails to solve the problems it is meant to address, by just ignoring the problems, or pushing them to another place. |
| 11[122] | p.225 | 7201 | Knowledge, wisdom and goodness only have value relative to a goal |
| Full Idea: Knowledge and wisdom have no value as such; nor does goodness: one must always first have a goal that confers value or disvalue on these qualities. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[122]) | |||
| A reaction: So what goals should we have? Nietzsche talks about the 'enhancement of life', but what is that, and why should we want it? There may be an ecological cost to enhancing human life. |
| 11[122] | p.225 | 7200 | A combination of great power and goodness would mean the disastrous abolition of evil |
| Full Idea: A high degree of power in the hands of the highest goodness would entail the most disastrous consequences ('the abolition of evil'). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[122]) | |||
| A reaction: This goes with Mackie's claim that the actual existence of evil is proof that an omnipotent and benevolent God can't exist (Idea 1472). |
| 11[153] | p.231 | 7203 | In heaven all the interesting men are missing |
| Full Idea: Has anyone noticed that in heaven all the interesting men are missing? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[153]) | |||
| A reaction: It does appear that the huge problem with paradise, when it is portrayed as lying around being waited on and revering God forever, is boredom. No charity work will be possible, so only a deadening politeness will remain of the good human life. |
| 11[407] | p.239 | 7204 | The upholding of the military state is needed to maintain the strong human type |
| Full Idea: The upholding of the military state is the ultimate means to either adopt or keep hold of the great tradition respecting the highest human type, the strong type. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[407]) | |||
| A reaction: I do find this kind of thing disappointing, after Nietzsche's wonderful deconstruction of traditional value systems. Is a killing field the only place where human strength can be exhibited? What's the point of human strength if it is displayed in killing? |
| 11[72] | p.211 | 7195 | If the world aimed at an end, it would have reached it by now |
| Full Idea: If the world process were directed towards a final state, that state would have been reached by now. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[72]) | |||
| A reaction: If advanced aliens existed, they would be here by now... I doubt if anyone now believes that the world has an end. However, strictly speaking, how could we possibly assess the time scale for such things? |
| 11[72] | p.212 | 7196 | Pessimism is laughable, because the world cannot be evaluated |
| Full Idea: The total value of the world is unevaluable, consequently philosophical pessimism is among the comical things. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[72]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche always has Schopenhauer in mind when he laughs at pessimism. Presumably, by the same token, optimism would be equally ridiculous. But how can Nietzsche's dynamic hopes for the future operate without optimism? |
| 11[75] | p.213 | 7197 | Pleasure needs dissatisfaction, boundaries and resistances |
| Full Idea: The feeling of pleasure lies precisely in the unsatisfaction of the will, in the way it is not yet satiated unless it has boundaries and resistances... | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[75]) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds like a 'higher' sort of pleasure, preferred by Nietzsche and Mill and clever chaps like that. Personally I like sunbathing and listening to music, and I float along very comfortably, like a cork on the stream of indulgence... |
| 11[99] | p.219 | 7198 | Nihilism results from measuring the world by our categories which are purely invented |
| Full Idea: Belief in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism - we have measured the value of the world against categories that refer to a purely invented world. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[99]) | |||
| A reaction: What a remarkable thought! He will have Kant especially in mind. The implication is that we might avoid nihilism by creating more accurate categories, but Nietzsche, as relativist, thinks that is impossible (Ideas 7174, 7175). Nihilism is our fate. |
| 14[219] | p.266 | 7209 | There is no will; weakness of will is splitting of impulses, strong will is coordination under one impulse |
| Full Idea: Weakness of will is misleading, for there is no will, and hence neither a strong will nor a weak one. Multiplicity and disaggregation of the impulses results as 'weak will'; coordination under the dominance of a single one results as 'strong will'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[219]) | |||
| A reaction: That Nietzsche seems to be right is clearer if we remember that the Greek terms are 'control' (enkrateia) and 'lack of control' (akrasia), with no reference to anything called the will. |
| 14[5] | p.241 | 7205 | Altruism is praised by the egoism of the weak, who want everyone to be looked after |
| Full Idea: Behind the general praise for 'altruism' is the instinct that the individual will be best safeguarded if everyone looks after each other....it's the egoism of the weak that created the praise, the exclusive praise for altruism. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[5]) | |||
| A reaction: I don't understand why Nietzsche so strongly despises the weak. Callicles (in Plato's 'Gorgias') embodies the strong, but he is utterly unlovable, and appears to be motivated mainly by a desire to have fun at other people's expense. |
| 14[79] | p.245 | 7206 | Things are strong or weak, and do not behave regularly or according to rules or compulsions |
| Full Idea: 'Things' do not behave regularly, not according to a rule: things are our fiction, and nor do they behave under the compulsion of necessity. That something is as it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of obeying or rules or compulsion. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[79]) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure about the denial of 'things', given that they are then said to be strong or weak, but Nietzsche seems to have had the key insight of modern essentialism, that the so-called 'laws' are merely the outcome of the inner natures of things. |
| 14[79] | p.246 | 7207 | Counting needs unities, but that doesn't mean they exist; we borrowed it from the concept of 'I' |
| Full Idea: We need unities in order to be able to count: we should not therefore assume that such unities exist. We have borrowed the concept of unity from our concept of 'I' - our oldest article of faith. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[79]) | |||
| A reaction: Personally I think that counting derives from patterns, and that all creatures can discern patterns in their environment, which means discriminating the parts of the pattern, which are therefore real and existing entities. |
| 14[89] | p.249 | 7208 | Paganism is a form of thanking and affirming life? |
| Full Idea: Is the pagan cult not a form of thanking and affirming life? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[89]) | |||
| A reaction: Yes, but it also centres on worries about life, such as potential famine and natural disasters. It is rooted as much in the negative of fear as in the positive of gratitude and appreciation. |
| 34[195] | p.12 | 7132 | Philosophers should create and fight for their concepts, not just clean and clarify them |
| Full Idea: The last thing to dawn on philosophers is that they must no longer merely let themselves be given concepts, no longer just clean and clarify them, but first of all must make them, create them, present them and persuade in their favour. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[195]) | |||
| A reaction: Compare the disagreement between Wittgenstein (Idea 2937) and Keith Ansell Pearson (Idea 6870). The trouble is that now every book you read is creating new concepts, which usually fail to catch on. I agree, though, with Nietzsche. |
| 34[230] | p.14 | 7133 | There are different eyes, so different 'truths', so there is no truth |
| Full Idea: There are many different eyes, .... and consequently there are many different 'truths', and consequently there is no truth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[230]) | |||
| A reaction: Sorry, I just don't follow this. Most people see the same things with their eyes, even if the perspective is subtly different. If we are puzzled by what we see, we swap places to check it. Nietzsche's life was too solitary. Some 'truths' are wrong. |
| 34[247] | p.14 | 7134 | Something can be irrefutable; that doesn't make it true |
| Full Idea: Something can be irrefutable; that doesn't make it true. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[247]) | |||
| A reaction: This is a warning to rationalists who are looking for strategies to demonstrate necessities a priori. |
| 34[250] | p.16 | 7135 | 'Freedom of will' is the feeling of having a dominating force |
| Full Idea: It is our feeling of having more force that we call 'freedom of will', the consciousness of our force compelling in relation to a force that is compelled. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[250]) | |||
| A reaction: I don't agree. That describes well how we experience the will, and develop the concept of a will, but the idea that the will is 'free' seems to me to be totally theoretical (and false), and doesn't derive from experience at all. |
| 34[30] | p.1 | 7129 | Perception is unconscious, and we are only conscious of processed perceptions |
| Full Idea: Sense-perception happens without our awareness: whatever we become conscious of is a perception that has already been processed. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[30]) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to me wonderfully perceptive for its date, and a crucial truth, because we have the delusion that we are our consciousness, whereas that is only a tiny part of what we are. |
| 34[46] | p.2 | 7131 | The intellect and senses are a simplifying apparatus |
| Full Idea: The intellect and the senses are, above all, a simplifying apparatus. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[46]) | |||
| A reaction: This seems like a profound truth to me. The world, and our own bodies, are of almost infinite complexity, such that only a god could grasp it. In order to teach, we have to simplify even further. We choose a level of simplification for contexts. |
| 34[46] | p.2 | 7130 | Unity is not in the conscious 'I', but in the organism, which uses the self as a tool |
| Full Idea: If I have anything of a unity within me, it certainly doesn't lie in the conscious 'I' and in feeling, willing, thinking, but somewhere else: in the ... prudence of my whole organism, of which my conscious self is only a tool. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[46]) | |||
| A reaction: What an interesting thinker Nietzsche was! I think I agree with this. I think the self is built on the necessary internalised body-map all animals must have. The body requires the map, not the map needing the body. |
| 35[24] | p.19 | 7137 | Is a 'philosopher' now impossible, because knowledge is too vast for an overview? |
| Full Idea: Is the 'philosopher' still possible today? Is not the extent of what is known too large? Is it not very unlikely that he will be able to reach an overview, the less so the more conscientious he is? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 35[24]) | |||
| A reaction: If Aristotle had a wonderful overview because knowledge was limited, presumably the overview was inaccurate - not an idea that would appeal to Nietzsche, with his relativism. I'd rather have too much knowledge, and struggle towards an overview. |
| 35[35] | p.20 | 7138 | The 'I' is a fiction used to make the world of becoming 'knowable' |
| Full Idea: I take the 'I' itself to be a construction of thinking, of the same rank as matter, thing, substance, individual, purpose, number: that is, only a regulative fiction used to insert a kind of 'knowability' into a world of becoming. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 35[35]) | |||
| A reaction: Personally I consider the 'I' to be a very real brain structure, which controls the multitude of brain operations, and focuses them on the survival and success of the organism. |
| 35[52] | p.21 | 7139 | Explanation is just showing the succession of things ever more clearly |
| Full Idea: Showing the succession of things ever more clearly is what's named 'explanation': no more than that! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 35[52]) | |||
| A reaction: If you lay bare all causal sequences, you may not have explained anything until you have pointed out a pattern in the events. Explanations must partly depend on the interests of the enquirer, so pure catalogues of events won't do. |
| 36[18] | p.24 | 7140 | Chemical 'laws' are merely the establishment of power relations between weaker and stronger |
| Full Idea: I take care not to talk of chemical 'laws'. It is rather a matter of the absolute establishment of power relations: the stronger becomes master of the weaker to the extent that the weaker cannot assert its autonomy - there is no respect for 'laws'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[18]) | |||
| A reaction: This links Nietzsche's will to power with Locke's talk of physical powers, and both point towards an essentialist view of natural laws, rather than seeing laws as something imposed from outside on nature. |
| 36[20] | p.25 | 7141 | A living being is totally 'egoistic' |
| Full Idea: A living being is 'egoistic' through and through. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[20]) | |||
| A reaction: Can't I even fight against my own dominating egoism? I just don't accept that this generalisation applies necessarily to all human beings at all times. How can a totally egoistic creature have 'low self-esteem'? |
| 36[264] | p.16 | 7136 | Morality is a system of values which accompanies a being's life |
| Full Idea: By morality, I understand a system of valuations which is contiguous with a being's conditions of life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[264]) | |||
| A reaction: It needs to be added that the values influence and control the life. Note that this defines morality as neither the qualities of character of virtue theory, nor the rules for conduct of deontology and utilitarianism. Morality MUST be rooted in values. |
| 36[31] | p.26 | 7142 | All motions and 'laws' are symptoms of inner events, traceable to the will to power |
| Full Idea: One must understand all motion, all 'appearances', all 'laws' as mere symptoms of inner events. ...all the functions of animal and organic life can be traced back to the will to power. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[31]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche must be the first philosopher to put inverted commas round the word 'law', referring to nature. |
| 37[4] | p.29 | 7143 | Consciousness is a 'tool' - just as the stomach is a tool |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is just a 'tool' and nothing more - in the same sense that the stomach is a tool. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 37[4]) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche was very critical of Darwin, but he absorbed his teachings quicker than anyone. I agree with this, and with Fodor (Idea 2508), that to understand a mind you must think about why we have minds. |
| 40[13] | p.42 | 7145 | Logic is not driven by truth, but desire for a simple single viewpoint |
| Full Idea: In logic a drive rules, first of falsifying, and then of implementing a single viewpoint: logic does not originate in the will to truth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 40[13]) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably logic derives from a will to simplify rather than a will for truth. Ockham's Razor describes the essence of human thinking. Even if Nietzsche is right, there is still a desire that the simplified view should be true. |
| 40[13] | p.42 | 7144 | Logic must falsely assume that identical cases exist |
| Full Idea: Logic assumes identical cases exist; to think and conclude logically, the fulfilment of this condition must first be feigned. That is: the will to logical truth cannot realise itself until a fundamental falsification of all events has been undertaken. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 40[13]) | |||
| A reaction: Interesting. This implies that the particularism espoused by virtue theorists (there are no principles, as each case is slightly different) should be extended to other branches of human understanding. So arithmetic is impossible?? |
| 40[15] | p.43 | 7146 | Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind |
| Full Idea: Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 40[15]) | |||
| A reaction: Compare Spinoza in Idea 4833. Hawking says he thinks better because he is largely paralysed. Externalism about mind makes it necessarily a part of the world and hence physical. I am inclined to agree with Nietzsche. |
| 1888 | The Will to Power (notebooks) |
| p.193 | 5652 | True beliefs are those which augment one's power | |
| Full Idea: For Nietzsche, the true belief is the one which augments one's power. | |||
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |||
| A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like pragmatism. Sounds suspiciously unlike truth as we know it. So many philosophers seem to me to confuse the concept of the truth itself with the ability of humans grasp the truth, or be interested in it. Truth is not part of us. |
| §015 | p.14 | 4485 | Every belief is a considering-something-true |
| Full Idea: Every belief is a considering-something-true. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |||
| A reaction: This is correct, I think, but a little perplexing coming from Nietzsche, who seems to deny objective truth. Presumably we should follow instinct, rather than 'belief'. |
| §015 | p.14 | 4486 | The extreme view is there are only perspectives, no true beliefs, because there is no true world |
| Full Idea: The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world. Thus: a perspectival appearance, whose origin lies in us. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |||
| A reaction: The idea that 'there is no true world' is incomprehensible to me. But note that here Nietzsche labels this an 'extreme' view, which he may not be asserting. He likes to flirt with danger. |
| §017 | p.15 | 4487 | A note for asses: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing |
| Full Idea: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing (a note for asses). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §017) | |||
| A reaction: I hope I am not such an ass that I need Nietzsche to explain this, as I have always thought it true. Many good modern epistemologists seem to me guilty of this error, though. Pragmatists, riff-raff like that… |
| §018 | p.16 | 4488 | Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality |
| Full Idea: Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §018) | |||
| A reaction: A nice remark. The interesting implication is that theists do NOT cling so strongly to morality (perhaps because they hope for mercy, or ultimate justice). |
| §020 | p.16 | 4489 | If faith is lost, people seek other authorities, in order to avoid the risk of willing personal goals |
| Full Idea: Having unlearned faith, one still seeks another authority (in conscience, or reason, or social instinct, or history); one wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §020) | |||
| A reaction: But what goal should you risk willing, and why? And what limits my goals? What is the hallmark of a healthy goal, or good taste in goals, or whatever it is Nietzsche aspires to? |
| §053 | p.33 | 4491 | In modern society virtue is 'equal rights', but only because everyone is zero, so it is a sum of zeroes |
| Full Idea: Our entire sociology simply does not know any other instinct than that of the herd, i.e. that of the sum of zeroes - where every zero has "equal rights", where it is virtuous to be zero. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §053) | |||
| A reaction: I see his point, but all social arrangements are a trade-off. It would be quite exciting if warlike aristocrats dragged us into massive conquest, but nuclear weapons seem to have ruined that game. |
| §066 | p.43 | 4493 | Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? |
| Full Idea: Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §066) | |||
| A reaction: Quite so, though Nietzsche isn't the person to offer a solution. Choose the route of Aristotle ('normal' human function), or Kant (escape from nature into reason). |
| §015 | p.10 | 20357 | Truth was given value by morality, but eventually turned against its own source |
| Full Idea: Among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |||
| A reaction: Just as 'duty' is said to have withered in modern times, because its religious underpinning has been lost, so this gives an account of the decline of the value of truth. It is still left to us to assert the value of truth, perhaps as the only value. |
| §120 | p.73 | 4494 | Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity |
| Full Idea: Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §120) | |||
| A reaction: I like that. The notion of dividing humanity into natural and unnatural makes me uneasy (and certainly isn't PC), and yet us all having to be 'natural' seems a conservative straight-jacket. |
| §121 | p.75 | 4495 | The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide |
| Full Idea: The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §121) | |||
| A reaction: Intriguing. What can Nietzsche have meant by 'civilization'? Certainly not the English utilitarian ideal. He probably means aristocrats running slaves… |
| §12B | p.13 | 4484 | Nihilism results from valuing the world by the 'categories of reason', because that is fiction |
| Full Idea: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism; we have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §12B) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably this refers to Kant, whose dogmatic assertions about the structure of human reason are as open to objection as those of Freud. Nietzsche may have a very profound truth here. |
| §141 | p.90 | 4496 | 'Conscience' is invented to value actions by intention and conformity to 'law', rather than consequences |
| Full Idea: "Conscience" was created as an inner voice which does not measure the value of every action with regard to its consequences, but with regard to its intention, and the degree to which this intention conforms with the "laws". | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |||
| A reaction: The idea of conscience does seem to preserve moral authority in the absence of gods, but intentions need not only be judged by their obedience to laws. |
| §141 | p.91 | 4497 | The concept of 'God' represents a turning away from life, and a critique of life |
| Full Idea: The concept 'God' represents a turning away from life, a critique of life, even a contempt for it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |||
| A reaction: Clearly Nietzsche has the same view of Platonism, and any view which aspires to 'higher' things, and views humans as being potentially divine (even Aristotle's dream of pure 'contemplation'). |
| §204 | p.120 | 4498 | 'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy' |
| Full Idea: One drives nature out of morality when one say "love your enemies": for then the natural "Though shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy" in the law (in instinct) has become meaningless. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §204) | |||
| A reaction: When the stoics said 'live according to nature' they meant according to reason, which presumably compromises with enemies. Profoundly Christian acts may be unnatural, but they are very moving. |
| §207 | p.123 | 4499 | Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state; it is opposed to defence, justice, patriotism and class |
| Full Idea: Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state: it forbids oaths, war service, courts of justice, defence of self or community, the distinction between citizens and foreigners, and differences of class. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §207) | |||
| A reaction: Interesting. This tension is still in Christianity, and permeates international socialism movements. But then Diogenes the Cynic said he was a citizen of the world. |
| §222 | p.129 | 4500 | It is a sign of degeneration when eudaimonistic values begin to prevail |
| Full Idea: It is a sign of degeneration when eudaemonistic valuations begin to prevail (physiological fatigue, feebleness of the will). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §222) | |||
| A reaction: Aristotle's analysis of eudaimonia says that it is only achievable through action, and he considers consequences to be an essential part of an action. Surely hedonism is more degenerate than aiming at all-round success in life? |
| §238 | p.291 | 20359 | The nature of being, of things, is much easier to understand than is becoming |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §238) | |||
| A reaction: I don't know if he intended it, but this is a fierce shaft hurled at Aristotle, who gives a wonderful essentialist account of the nature of things, but can offer nothing more on becoming than the doctrine of potentiality and actuality. |
| §253 | p.147 | 4502 | Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing |
| Full Idea: Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing! The "beyond" is absolutely necessary if faith in morality is to be maintained. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |||
| A reaction: It strikes me that Nietzsche is self-evidently wrong. We must ask why people hang on to moral absolutes after they lose religious faith. Nietzsche seems to think it is a comfort blanket. But he admits the contractarian origins of morality. |
| §253 | p.147 | 4501 | Utilitarianism criticises the origins of morality, but still believes in it as much as Christians |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism (socialism, democracy) criticises the origins of moral evaluations, but it believes them just as much as the Christian does. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |||
| A reaction: It is a critique of both utilitarianism and Kantian deontology that they seem to rest on unquestioned assumptions about what has value (pleasure, happiness, reason). I think Aristotle offers a better answer to this problem than 'divine' authority. |
| §259 | p.149 | 20370 | All evaluation is from some perspective, and aims at survival |
| Full Idea: All evaluation is made from a definite perspective: that of the preservation of the individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a faith, a culture. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |||
| A reaction: There seems to be a tension over the source of values in Nietzsche. Are they the individualistic visions of an übermensch, or do they arise from the collective pressures of one of these social groups? I suspec that his answer tries to combine them. |
| §259 | p.150 | 20383 | The wisest man is full of contradictions, and attuned to other people, with occasional harmony |
| Full Idea: The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |||
| A reaction: By 'us' does he mean himself? Whether the rest of us thought such a person to be wise would depend on whether we met them on a contradictory or a harmonious day. Permanent harmony should be viewed with suspicion. |
| §260 | p.150 | 4504 | Morality used to be for preservation, but now we can only experiment, giving ourselves moral goals |
| Full Idea: Formerly one employed morality for preservation: but nobody wants to preserve any longer, there is nothing to preserve. Therefore an experimental morality: to give oneself a goal. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §260) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as the essence of Nietzsche, and the relativist position. Exciting and dangerous. Let's kill someone (Gide). Take drugs (Manson). Betray friends (Genet). Be altruistic…? |
| §269 | p.153 | 4505 | How can it be that I should prefer my neighbour to myself, but he should prefer me to himself? |
| Full Idea: What does it mean that the welfare of my neighbour ought to possess for me a higher value than my own? But that my neighbour ought to subordinate his welfare to my welfare? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §269) | |||
| A reaction: Interestingly, this is Nietzsche using a Kantian tool to criticise Christian morality. He is pointing out a logical inconsistency. It seems to me an excellent question, though Christians could say it is benignly circular. The most benign circle possible. |
| §274 | p.156 | 4506 | There is a conspiracy (a will to power) to make morality dominate other values, like knowledge and art |
| Full Idea: Whose will to power is morality? - Since Socrates there has been a sustained attempt to make moral values dominate over other values, so that they guide living, but also knowledge, the arts, and political and social endeavour. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §274) | |||
| A reaction: Is the 'will to power' really an explanation? If all human activity is the will to power, then you have to explain the difference between activities. Genocide and altruism are strikingly different manifestations of the will to power. |
| §275 | p.157 | 4507 | The categorical imperative needs either God behind it, or a metaphysic of the unity of reason |
| Full Idea: One needed God as an unconditional sanction, as a 'categorical imperative'; or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §275) | |||
| A reaction: I am not sure what a 'metaphysic of unity' is, but this still captures the problem with Kant. The categorical imperative is purely formal, and will justify consistent principles of pain and destruction, without some value to get it off the ground. |
| §279 | p.158 | 4508 | The truth is what gives us the minimum of spiritual effort, and avoids the exhaustion of lying |
| Full Idea: What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of spiritual effort (moreover, lying is very exhausting). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §279) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche is just being naughty here. Obviously lazy but intelligent people tell the truth, but to suggest that there is nothing more to truth means the collapse of language and thought. Which means no more reading Nietzsche… |
| §280 | p.159 | 20372 | The instinct of the herd, the majority, aims for the mean, in the middle |
| Full Idea: The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §280) | |||
| A reaction: The reason, I think, for Nietzsche's hostility to Aristotle. But the doctrine of the mean doesn't just seek the middle. It seeks what is appropriate. The mean for bravery and cowardice is not somewhat timid bravery; it is alarmingly brave, but sensible. |
| §291 | p.164 | 4509 | Utilitarians prefer consequences because intentions are unknowable - but so are consequences! |
| Full Idea: Utilitarians say actions must be judged by consequences, because it is impossible to know the origins. But one only knows the consequences about five steps ahead, and who knows what an action can stimulate, excite, provoke? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §291) | |||
| A reaction: The utilitarian slogan seems to be 'do your best', but that could apply equally to intentions and consequences. Nietzsche seems to offer nothing to compensate us for our massive ignorance. Nihilism. |
| §310 | p.172 | 4510 | A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one |
| Full Idea: A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §310) | |||
| A reaction: A nicely wicked Nietzschean suggestion. One doesn't replace altruism, one 'reinterprets' it. Or democracy. Or 'true' courage. |
| §313 | p.173 | 4511 | We would avoid a person who always needed reasons for remaining decent |
| Full Idea: It would arouse doubts in us concerning a man if we heard he needed reasons for remaining decent: certainly, we would avoid him. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §313) | |||
| A reaction: This is a perfect slogan for virtue theory, and so rather surprising coming from Nietzsche. And 'decent' isn't a great Nietzsche value (though he WAS a very decent man). |
| §318 | p.176 | 4512 | Virtue is pursued from self-interest and prudence, and reduces people to non-entities |
| Full Idea: Above all, gentlemen of virtue, you are not our superiors: it is a miserable self-interest and prudence that suggests virtue to you. If you had more strength and courage you would not reduce yourselves to virtuous nonentities in this way. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §318) | |||
| A reaction: It is certainly true that virtue is about self-interest, and also that it tends to be rather conservative. But we recognise the virtues of adventure and risk. |
| §319 | p.176 | 4513 | Virtuous people are inferior because they are not 'persons', but conform to a fixed pattern |
| Full Idea: A virtuous man is a lower species because he is not a "person" but acquires his value by conforming to a pattern of man that is fixed once and for all. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §319) | |||
| A reaction: A penetrating critque of virtue theory. If, even now, we are trying to conform to Aristotle's model, that is VERY conservative. The obliteration of individual identity is also a charge against Kant and Bentham. Virtues are more flexible than rules. |
| §345 | p.189 | 4514 | The basic tendency of the weak has always been to pull down the strong, using morality |
| Full Idea: The basic tendency of the weak and mediocre of all ages is to weaken and pull down the stronger: chief means, the moral judgement. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §345) | |||
| A reaction: Obviously this contains some truth. Morality is a vast trade union movement by means of which the weak seek power and security. And good luck to them, I say. Why is mass power any worse than aristocratic or oligarchic power? |
| §356 | p.195 | 4515 | Modesty, industriousness, benevolence and temperance are the virtues of a good slave |
| Full Idea: Modest, industrious, benevolent, temperate: is that how you would have men? good men? But to me that seems only the ideal slave, the slave of the future. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §356) | |||
| A reaction: An extremely good critical observation on virtue theory. Start from scratch, and list the virtues you would want in a good slave. |
| §358 | p.196 | 4516 | Many virtues are merely restraints on the most creative qualities of a human being |
| Full Idea: Industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance are just so many hindrances to a sovereign disposition, great inventiveness, heroic purposiveness, noble being-for-oneself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §358) | |||
| A reaction: The traditional virtues here are reasonably precise and clear, but Nietzsche's preferred virtues are vague, and open to bizarre interpretations. One foresees a bunch of obsessive arrogant fools trying to live up to Nietzsche's ideal. |
| §362 | p.197 | 4517 | Egoism is inescapable, and when it grows weak, the power of love also grows weak |
| Full Idea: There cannot be anything other than egoism; in men whose ego is weak and thin the power of great love also grows weak. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §362) | |||
| A reaction: We have captured this now in the popular psychological notion of 'low self-esteem', which blights a persons behaviour. It runs counter to the Christian ideal of self-effacing altruism. |
| §364 | p.198 | 4518 | The question about egoism is: what kind of ego? since not all egos are equal |
| Full Idea: Egoism! But no one has yet asked: what kind of ego? On the contrary, everyone unconsciously thinks every ego equal to every other ego. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §364) | |||
| A reaction: The implication, I presume, is that you should be egoistic if you have a really excellent ego, but very altruistic if you are a loser. Or a slave. Or a monk. |
| §370 | p.199 | 4519 | The ego is only a fiction, and doesn't exist at all |
| Full Idea: The 'subject' is only a fiction: the ego of which one speaks when one censures egoism does not exist at all. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §370) | |||
| A reaction: This is the true Nietzsche, the nihilistic relativist. On optimistic days he thought some people had quivering dynamic egoes, to which they apparently owe duties, as one might to a great talent with which one was born. |
| §387 | p.208 | 23938 | Passions are ranked, as if they are non-rational and animal pleasure seeking |
| Full Idea: The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if it were the right and normal thing to be guided by reason - with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal …and nothing other than desires for pleasure. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |||
| A reaction: This thought of Nietzsche's seems to be very important, because the Enlightenment relegation of passions was inherited from Christianity, and dominated European culture (and Buddhism too, I think). |
| §387 | p.208 | 23939 | We fail to see that reason is a network of passions, and every passion contains some reason |
| Full Idea: The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more accurate account of the relation of reason and passion than almost anything in earlier philosophy (though Aristotle is quite good on it). I am retraining myself to see my mental life in this way. |
| §420 | p.226 | 4520 | I don't want to persuade anyone to be a philosopher; they should be rare plants |
| Full Idea: I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §420) | |||
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is disagreement, but 'what if everybody' became a philosopher. The fear is that philosophy paralyses action, but it need not. Good philosophy is time-consuming. History would come to an end. The excitement of medieval history! |
| §428 | p.232 | 4521 | None of the ancients had the courage to deny morality by denying free will |
| Full Idea: Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage for a theory of the 'unfree will' (i.e. for a theory that denies morality). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §428) | |||
| A reaction: The ancients were struck by fate, and by the elusiveness of truth, and Heraclitus said that "character is fate". But Nietzsche seems basically correct. |
| §431 | p.235 | 4523 | What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth |
| Full Idea: What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §431) | |||
| A reaction: He admits that some things can be demonstrated, and that they have some worth. But demonstration may be a matter of coherence, so that anything can be demonstrated, by assuming a range of ideas as being beyond demonstration. |
| §478 | p.265 | 20374 | Consciousness is a terminal phenomenon, and causes nothing |
| Full Idea: Everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end - and causes nothing. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §478) | |||
| A reaction: This appears to endorse epiphenomenalism - which I take to be an incoherent concept. How can becoming fully aware of something, rather than subliminally or subconsciously aware, make no difference at all? If it exists, it has causal powers. |
| §481 | p.267 | 4525 | There are no facts in themselves, only interpretations |
| Full Idea: Against positivism, which halts at phenomena, and says "there are only facts", I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §481) | |||
| A reaction: A cornerstone of relativism is the denial of facts. A cornerstone of realism is the affirmation of facts. Personally, I affirm facts. |
| §490 | p.270 | 4527 | Perhaps we are not single subjects, but a multiplicity of 'cells', interacting to create thought |
| Full Idea: The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps we are a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and consciousness, an aristocracy of 'cells' in which dominion resides equally. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §490) | |||
| A reaction: A nice combination of Humean scepticism, and an anticipation of the modularity of mind. Was Nietzsche thinking about evolution? It goes with his doubts about reason (if we are run by a committee). |
| §497 | p.273 | 4528 | For me, a priori 'truths' are just provisional assumptions |
| Full Idea: The most strongly believed a priori 'truths' are for me provisional assumptions (e.g. the law of causality). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §497) | |||
| A reaction: The example of causality would fit in with Humean scepticism, but presumably Nietzsche would also apply it to maths and logic, since he is a thorough-going relativist. I cautiously disagree. |
| §505 | p.275 | 4529 | All sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful or harmful) |
| Full Idea: It cannot be doubted that all sense perceptions are permeated with value judgements (useful and harmful - consequently, pleasant and unpleasant). | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §505) | |||
| A reaction: A thesis expanded by Charles Taylor ('Sources of the Self'). This is a very modern view, but also a very Greek view, which slices through the is/ought distinction. |
| §515 | p.278 | 4530 | Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal |
| Full Idea: Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §515) | |||
| A reaction: Call me narrow-minded, prejudiced and arrogant, but I just don't believe this. Rational minds meet across cultures, and good reasons can rise above culture. However, I may be wrong about this… |
| §516 | p.279 | 4531 | Our inability to both affirm and deny a single thing is merely an inability, not a 'necessity' |
| Full Idea: We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any 'necessity', but only an inability. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |||
| A reaction: A remarkable claim, made by someone utterly gripped by relativism. I don't believe it. Why can't we do it? We experience it as a truth, not as a prejudice or mental block. I say it reflects reality - there is only one set of facts. |
| §516 | p.280 | 4533 | Logic and maths refer to fictitious entities which we have created |
| Full Idea: Logic (like geometry and arithmetic) applies only to fictitious entities that we have created. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |||
| A reaction: This finds Nietzsche on the relativist wing of logical empiricism. The thing is, fictitious entities can have a close relationship with truth, as in a great novel. I believe in necessary logical truth, but there are many ways of slicing it. |
| §516 | p.280 | 4532 | We can have two opposite sensations, like hard and soft, at the same time |
| Full Idea: There is a coarse sensualistic prejudice that sensations teach us truths about things - that I cannot say at the same time that a thing is hard and soft. To say that I cannot have two opposite sensations at the same time is quite coarse and false. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |||
| A reaction: I am struggling to think of examples. I might experience something as cool, but judge it to be warm (because my hand is hot). I don't think I know what experience he is referring to. Interesting claim, though. |
| §517 | p.280 | 4534 | 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations |
| Full Idea: 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §517) | |||
| A reaction: I suspect that this is a nice explanation of why we value truth, but says nothing at all about what truth actually is. I can't think of a better explanation of why we value truth. |
| §521 | p.282 | 4535 | A 'species' is a stable phase of evolution, implying the false notion that evolution has a goal |
| Full Idea: When a 'species' appears, it is a phase in which evolution is not visible, so an equilibrium seems to have been attained, making possible the false notion that a goal has been attained, and that evolution has a goal. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §521) | |||
| A reaction: A penetrating explanation of a crucial that won't go away, and that still grips people's minds. Even if we all want a particular goal, evolution will ignore our dreams and go another way. |
| §529 | p.286 | 4536 | It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing |
| Full Idea: There is a tremendous blunder in absurdly overestimating consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity - 'spirit', 'soul', something that feels, thinks, wills. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §529) | |||
| A reaction: This is a wonderfully modern and scientific view. Even strong materialists still make claims about mental unity, behind which an extravagent and contradictory metaphysics can be hidden. Was Nietzsche, then, an 'eliminativist' about mind? |
| §530 | p.286 | 4537 | We can't know whether there is knowledge if we don't know what it is |
| Full Idea: If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question of whether there is knowledge. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |||
| A reaction: Obviously Nietzsche is pessimistic about the prospects here, but this is a motto for the whole modern analysis of knowledge, and (besides) we have lots of things (like a concept of identity) which we can't define. |
| §530 | p.287 | 4538 | Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations |
| Full Idea: An isolated judgement is never 'true', never knowledge; only in connection and relation of many judgements is there any surety. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |||
| A reaction: It actually seems impossible to state an isolated judgement in language without having a mass of presuppositions and beliefs to support it. I don't think the full holistic thesis about language follows, however. |
| §530 | p.288 | 4539 | The forms of 'knowledge' about logic which precede experience are actually regulations of belief |
| Full Idea: The basic laws of logic (identity and contradiction) are said to be forms of pure knowledge because they precede experience. But these are not forms of knowledge at all! They are regulative articles of belief. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |||
| A reaction: This is a standard objection to foundationalism - that the basic beliefs (of reason, or raw experience) are not actually knowledge. We can all speculate about their origin and basis. Personally I think 'truth' must be somewhere in the explanation. |
| §536 | p.291 | 4541 | Everything simple is merely imaginary |
| Full Idea: Everything simple is merely imaginary. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §536) | |||
| A reaction: A wonderful aphorism. This is one's worst fear, which is why it is suggested that ontological O's R is bad, though epistemological O's R ('be cautious') is fine. I have to admit that I have no idea whether reality is simple. |
| §551 | p.296 | 4542 | Science has taken the meaning out of causation; cause and effect are two equal sides of an equation |
| Full Idea: Science has emptied the concept of causality of its content and retained it as a formula of an equation, in which it has become at bottom a matter of indifference on which side cause is placed and on which side effect. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §551) | |||
| A reaction: What a perceptive remark in the nineteenth century. Science is notoriously uninterested in the direction of time, and such a symmetry seems to make the concept of causation redundant. |
| §556 | p.301 | 4543 | There are no 'facts-in-themselves', since a sense must be projected into them to make them 'facts' |
| Full Idea: There are no 'facts-in-themselves', for a sense must always be projected into them before they can be 'facts'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §556) | |||
| A reaction: The relativist (and anti-realist) view. Any attempt at taking this proposal seriously induces a hopeless vertigo, a well known consequence of reading Nietzsche. I don't believe this. It is not to my taste. |
| §557 | p.302 | 4544 | A thing has no properties if it has no effect on other 'things' |
| Full Idea: The properties of a thing are effects on other 'things'; if one removes other 'things', then a thing has no properties. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §557) | |||
| A reaction: This is a causal theory of properties. A counterexample is a potential property, like a bomb which never explodes. |
| §560 | p.303 | 4545 | Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? |
| Full Idea: Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §560) | |||
| A reaction: A reasonable speculation. I begin to feel my opinions are objective if they are reinforced by the agreement of others. One can believe in the facts, but despair of objectivity. It is called 'scepticism'. Buf cf. T.Nagel. |
| §562 | p.303 | 4546 | We realise that properties are sensations of the feeling subject, not part of the thing |
| Full Idea: There comes a point where one realises that what one calls a property of a thing is a sensation of the feeling subject; at this point the property ceases to belong to the thing. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §562) | |||
| A reaction: I don't believe this. Has Nietzsche no theory about WHY we have one sensation rather than another? I prefer to distinguish primary from secondary qualities. |
| §574 | p.309 | 4548 | Only because there is thought is there untruth |
| Full Idea: Only because there is thought is there untruth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §574) | |||
| A reaction: A nicely oblique place to start in one's study of truth. Untruth is a very human contribution to the world, making virtually no sense of animal thought. Meta-thought seems to be required. |
| §575 | p.316 | 4551 | Great self-examination is to become conscious of oneself not as an individual, but as mankind |
| Full Idea: Tremendous self-examination: becoming conscious of oneself, not as an individual but as mankind. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §575) | |||
| A reaction: A lovely thought, which illustrates the fact that it is hard to be introspective without bringing an agenda to the process. |
| §579 | p.311 | 4550 | Pleasure and pain are mere epiphenomena, and achievement requires that one desire both |
| Full Idea: Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values - they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §579) | |||
| A reaction: I am struggling with the notion that I must desire pain if I am ambitious, but to label these feeling 'epiphenomena' is challenging and plausible. I certainly deny that they have intrinsic value, which is a matter of judgement, not feeling. |
| §635 | p.338 | 20361 | We need 'unities' for reckoning, but that does not mean they exist |
| Full Idea: We need 'unities' in order to be able to reckon: that does not mean we must suppose that such unities exist. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |||
| A reaction: True. I takes this thought to be important in the Psychology of Metaphysics (an unfashionable branch). |
| §635 | p.338 | 20362 | We saw unity in things because our ego seemed unified (but now we doubt the ego!) |
| Full Idea: We borrowed the concept of unity from our 'ego' concept - our oldest article of faith. If we did not hold ourselves to be unified, we would never have formed the concept 'thing'. Now, somewhat late, we are convinced that the ego does not guarantee unity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche tells a similar story about the emergence and subsequent undermining of truth. I am becoming an enthusiast for Nietzsche's account of how our psychology has generated out metaphysics - which doesn't make the metaphysics false. |
| §667 | p.352 | 4553 | We derive the popular belief in cause and effect from our belief that our free will causes things |
| Full Idea: The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the presupposition that free will is the cause of every effect: it is only from this that we derive the feeling of causality. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §667) | |||
| A reaction: It may be that our first experiences of causation involve the wil, though I don't see why babies shouldn't also observe. Nietzsche is muddling the epistemology with the ontology. |
| §668 | p.353 | 4552 | There is no such things a pure 'willing' on its own; the aim must always be part of it |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'willing', but only willing something: one must not remove the aim from the total condition - as epistemologists do. 'Willing' as they understand it is as little a reality as 'thinking': it is a pure fiction. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §668) | |||
| A reaction: This is parallel to the common modern assertion that emotions also have intentional content, and cannot be understood as having a 'pure' identity. |
| §671 | p.354 | 4554 | The concept of the 'will' is just a false simplification by our understanding |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'will'; it is only a simplifying conception of understanding, as is 'matter'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §671) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche shares this view with British philosophers such as Hobbes and Bernard Williams. So what is the ontological status of the 'will to power'? |
| §677 | p.359 | 20354 | The ruling drives of our culture all want to be the highest court of our values |
| Full Idea: What is common to all [the artistic, scientific, religious and moral views]: the ruling drives want to be viewed also as the highest courts of value in general, indeed as creative and ruling powers. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §677) | |||
| A reaction: An interesting question is whether those four socially dominant forces could reach a consensus on a core of values. And also which value held by one of the groups is viewed as crazy by the other three. |
| §705 | p.375 | 4555 | The great error is to think that happiness derives from virtue, which in turn derives from free will |
| Full Idea: The tremendous rat's tail of errors that has hitherto counted as the highest inspiration of humanity: 'All happiness is a consequence of virtue, all virtue is a consequence of free will!' | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §705) | |||
| A reaction: A nice suggestion about the hidden agenda of Greek and Christian philosophy. If one began to doubt free will, where would that leave Socrates and Aristotle? |
| §751 | p.397 | 4557 | The supposed great lovers of honour (Alexander etc) were actually great despisers of honour |
| Full Idea: The type of the ambitious man who thirsts after honour is supposed to be Napoleon, or Caesar, or Alexander! As if these were not precisely the great despisers of honour! | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §751) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure how Nietzsche knows this, but it sounds right. Great success comes from total focus on the end, not on incidental rewards. |
| §759 | p.399 | 4558 | We have no more right to 'happiness' than worms |
| Full Idea: One has no right to 'happiness': the individual human being is in precisely the same case as the lowest worm. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §759) | |||
| A reaction: This seems an obvious truth, but nicely made clear. It is, I suppose, aimed at Christians and socialists. |
| §784 | p.412 | 4559 | When powerless one desires freedom; if power is too weak, one desires equal power ('justice') |
| Full Idea: One desires freedom as long as one does not possess power. Once one does possess it, one desires to overpower; if one cannot do that (if one is too weak), one desires 'justice', i.e. equal power. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §784) | |||
| A reaction: Personally I hope the Martians have freedom and justice, but that is presumably just a sublimation. People have given up power for freedom and justice. |
| §925 | p.488 | 4560 | The Golden Rule prohibits harmful actions, with the premise that actions will be requited |
| Full Idea: The rule 'do nothing that ought not to be done to you' prohibits actions on account of their harmful consequences: the concealed premise is that an action will always be requited. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §925) | |||
| A reaction: Indeed it seems to be a slogan for contractarians, though I don't see why you shouldn't be influenced by the thought that there might be reciprocation, even if you don't expect it. |
| §962 (1885) | p.505 | 20136 | There is an extended logic to a great man's life, achieved by a sustained will |
| Full Idea: There is a logic in all of a great man's activities, hard to survey because of its length .... he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §962 (1885)) | |||
| A reaction: This looks very close to Nietzsche's moral ideal - that one creates a life in impeccable taste, like a great work of art, by deliberately training one's nature, like a gardener. He talks of it as having 'style' in character. |
| §966 | p.507 | 20358 | The highest man can endure and control the greatest combination of powerful drives |
| Full Idea: The highest man has the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, when the plant 'man' shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g. in Shakespeare), but are controlled. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §966) | |||
| A reaction: Are there some people, perhaps in mental hospitals, who cannot endure or control such things? Do these people have some drives which the rest of us never experience? Do good people only have good drives? |
| §999 | p.519 | 20369 | The highest man directs the values of the highest natures over millenia |
| Full Idea: He who determines values and directs the will of millenia by giving direction to the highest natures is the highest man. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §999) | |||
| A reaction: The second half is the interesting bit. If Ghengis Khan inspires hordes to commit massacres, he certainly creates values, but he hasn't inspired highest natures. So who inspires highest natures? Who are the role models of role models? |
| 1889 | The Anti-Christ |
| §11 | p.121 | 20375 | Virtues must be highly personal; if not, it is merely respect for a concept |
| Full Idea: A virtue has to be our invention, our most personal defence and necessity: in any other sense it is merely a danger. What does not condition our life harms it: a virtue merely from a feeling of respect for the concept 'virtue', as Kant desires it, is harm | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], §11) | |||
| A reaction: Presumably he sees virtue as the cutting edge of stiffling conventional morality. I'm a bit nervous about embracing highly personal virtues, partly because they might isolate me from my community. I ain't no übermensch. |
| 05 | p.117 | 20138 | Christianity is at war with the higher type of man, and excommunicates his basic instincts |
| Full Idea: Christianity has waged a war to the death against the higher type of man, it has excommunicated all the fundamental instincts of this type. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 05) | |||
| A reaction: It seems rather insulting to say that the finest and most dedicated altruism practised by the most admirable Christians is the expression of a 'lower' instinct. |
| 11 | p.122 | 2915 | Each person should devise his own virtues and categorical imperative |
| Full Idea: Each one of us should devise his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 11) |
| 43 | p.155 | 2916 | The great lie of immortality destroys rationality and natural instinct |
| Full Idea: The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 43) |
| 43 | p.157 | 2917 | Christianity is a revolt of things crawling on the ground against elevated things |
| Full Idea: Christianity is a revolt of everything which crawls along the ground against everything which is elevated. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 43) |
| 48 | p.163 | 2918 | The story in Genesis is the story of God's fear of science |
| Full Idea: Has the famous story which stands at the beginning of the Bible really been understood - the story of God's mortal terror of science? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 48) |
| 50 | p.167 | 23520 | Truth has had to be fought for, and normal life must be sacrificed to achieve it |
| Full Idea: Truth has had to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts, on which our love and our trust in life depend, has had to be sacrificed to it. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 50) | |||
| A reaction: This, in one of his final works, seems to contradict every idea that Nietzsche is the high priest of relativism about truth. He (and Foucault) and interested in the social role of truth, but are not so daft as to reject its possibility. |
| 52 | p.169 | 2919 | 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true |
| Full Idea: 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 52) |
| 52 | p.170 | 2920 | A God who cures us of a head cold at the right moment is a total absurdity |
| Full Idea: A God who cures a headcold for us at the right moment is so absurd a God he would have to be abolished even if he existed. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 52) |
| 55 | p.174 | 2921 | Philosophy grasps the limits of human reason, and values are beyond it |
| Full Idea: All the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason. …To grasp the limits of human reason, only this is philosophy. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 55) | |||
| A reaction: The single most powerful idea in the writings of Nietzsche. Reason and truth are values. Why do we value philosophy? There is no escaping Nietzsche's question. |
| 58 | p.181 | 2922 | All intelligent Romans were Epicureans |
| Full Idea: Every mind of any account in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], 58) |
| Fore | p.114 | 2914 | One must never ask whether truth is useful |
| Full Idea: One must never ask whether truth is useful. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], Fore) |
| 1889 | Ecce Homo |
| 3.1 | p.21 | 2887 | I am not an atheist because of reasoning or evidence, but because of instinct |
| Full Idea: I have absolutely no knowledge of atheism as an outcome of reasoning, still less an event: with me it is obvious by instinct. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], 3.1) |
| 4.5 | p.45 | 2886 | The distinction between egoistic and non-egoistic acts is absurd |
| Full Idea: There are neither egoistic nor unegoistic actions: both concepts are psychologically nonsense. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], 4.5) | |||
| A reaction: Not quite true, but I like this observation. The idea that you could divide everyone's actions into these two groups is certainly nonsense. But some people are more altruistic than others! |
| Clever §1 | p.236 | 4426 | A bad result distorts one's judgement about the virtue of what one has done |
| Full Idea: I should prefer to exclude the bad result, the consequences, from the question of value as a matter of principle. Faced with a bad result, one loses all too easily the right perspective for what one has done. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Clever §1) | |||
| A reaction: If the perspective is easily lost, we should make more effort, not ignore consequences. The question is whether you could have foreseen or controlled the consequences. |
| Fore | p.6 | 2889 | One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil |
| Full Idea: One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Fore) |
| II.9 | p.68 | 20132 | To become what you are you must have no self-awareness |
| Full Idea: To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion of what one is. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], II.9), quoted by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 3 'fatalism' | |||
| A reaction: [Don't understand 'II.9'] Enigmatic but striking. As I understand it, Nietzsche thought that knowing what you are is virtually impossible, though he spent a lifetime studying himself. Would you recognise someone who had become what they are? |
| III.Z-1? | p.119 | 20144 | Eternal recurrence is the highest attainable affirmation |
| Full Idea: Eternal recurrence is the highest formula of affirmation that is at all attainable. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], III.Z-1?), quoted by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality | |||
| A reaction: Did Nietzsche have in mind an even higher formulation that was unattainable? The aim of eternal recurrence is to offer the highest possible ideal that remains rooted in the nature of ordinary life. It is a cut-down version of the Form of the Good. |
| Wise §4 | p.228 | 4425 | The overcoming of pity I count among the noble virtues |
| Full Idea: The overcoming of pity I count among the noble virtues. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Wise §4) | |||
| A reaction: Hm. I can just about see that there might be more important things than compassion for suffering, but I can't see any human activity that makes it worthwhile to trample on pity. |
| Wise §7 | p.232 | 4424 | A warlike philosopher challenges problems to single combat |
| Full Idea: A warlike philosopher challenges problems to single combat. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Ecce Homo [1889], Wise §7) | |||
| A reaction: And what do pacifist philosophers do? It is a moot point whether philosophy is even possible without a streak of aggression. Otherwise you circle the problem, but don't confront it. |
| 1889 | Twilight of the Idols |
| Maxim 08 | p.23 | 15606 | Military idea: what does not kill me makes me stronger |
| Full Idea: From the military school of life. - What does not kill me makes me stronger. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 08) | |||
| A reaction: The published version! Perhaps the most famous remark in all of Nietzsche, and no one realises it is ironic! It is a sarcastic remark about the battering ram mentality of the Prussian militarist! He had served in the army. |
| Maxim 12 | p.23 | 2891 | Only the English actually strive after happiness |
| Full Idea: Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 12) | |||
| A reaction: The Danes keeping being voted the happiest nation, so presumably that results from some sort of effort on their part. The easiest is happiness is to achieve security, then do nothing. |
| Maxim 26 | p.25 | 2892 | Wanting a system in philosophy is a lack of integrity |
| Full Idea: I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 26) |
| Maxim 33 | p.26 | 20101 | Without music life would be a mistake |
| Full Idea: Without music life would be a mistake. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], Maxim 33) | |||
| A reaction: Cf Schopenhauer in Idea 21469. If you, dear reader, don't love music, then I sincerely hope that there is something in your life which can match it. |
| 1.01 | p.29 | 2893 | In every age the wisest people have judged life to be worthless |
| Full Idea: In every age the wisest have passed the identical judgement on life: it is worthless. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.01) | |||
| A reaction: I guess he was having a bad day. Since the whole universe is clearly 'worthless', this judgement must in some sense be correct. But I love my books. |
| 1.02 | p.30 | 2894 | Value judgements about life can never be true |
| Full Idea: Judgements, value judgements concerning life, for or against it, can in the last resort never be true. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |||
| A reaction: I suppose this is in the same spirit as judging whether celery tastes nice. Are you for or against the Moon? |
| 1.02 | p.30 | 18308 | A philosopher fails in wisdom if he thinks the value of life is a problem |
| Full Idea: For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life thus even constitutes an objection to him, a question-mark as to his wisdom, a piece of unwisdom. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) |
| 1.02 | p.30 | 2895 | The value of life cannot be estimated |
| Full Idea: The value of life cannot be estimated. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.02) | |||
| A reaction: Military leaders apparently judge that the death of one of their own soldiers is worth between 12 and 20 enemy deaths (so history suggests). How about ransom money? |
| 1.04 | p.31 | 2896 | I want to understand the Socratic idea that 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' |
| Full Idea: I seek to understand out of what idiosyncrasy that Socratic equation 'reason equals virtue equals happiness' derives. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.04) |
| 1.05 | p.31 | 2897 | With dialectics the rabble gets on top |
| Full Idea: With dialectics the rabble gets on top. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.05) |
| 1.05 | p.31 | 2898 | Anything which must first be proved is of little value |
| Full Idea: What has first to have itself proved is of little value. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.05) |
| 1.10 | p.33 | 2899 | The fanatical rationality of Greek philosophy shows that they were in a state of emergency |
| Full Idea: The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws itself at rationality betrays itself as a state of emergency: one was in peril, one had only one choice: either to perish or- be absurdly rational. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 1.10) |
| 2.1 | p.36 | 18309 | The evidence of the senses is falsified by reason |
| Full Idea: 'Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.1) | |||
| A reaction: One for McDowell. |
| 2.2 | p.36 | 2900 | I revere Heraclitus |
| Full Idea: I set apart with high reverence the name of Heraclitus. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.2) |
| 2.4 | p.37 | 18310 | The 'highest' concepts are the most general and empty concepts |
| Full Idea: The 'highest concepts' ...are the most general, the emptiest concepts, the last fumes of evaporating reality. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) | |||
| A reaction: This could be seen as an attack on the aspirations of all of philosophy, which seeks general truths out of the chaos of experience. Should we shut up, then, and just be and do? |
| 2.4 | p.37 | 18311 | Philosophers hate values having an origin, and want values to be self-sufficient |
| Full Idea: For philosophers, the higher must not be allowed to grow out of the lower, must not be allowed to have grown at all ...Moral: everything of the first rank must be causa sui. Origin in something else counts as an objection, as casting a doubt on value. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) | |||
| A reaction: This is so deep and central that I wrote a paper on it, advocating that the theory of values should focus of value-makers. |
| 2.4 | p.37 | 18312 | The supreme general but empty concepts must be compatible, and hence we get 'God' |
| Full Idea: The supreme concepts of philosophers cannot be incommensurate with one another, be incompatible with one another... Thus they acquired their stupendous concept 'God'.... The last, thinnest, emptiest is placed as the first, as cause in itself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) |
| 2.5 | p.38 | 18313 | The big error is to think the will is a faculty producing effects; in fact, it is just a word |
| Full Idea: At the beginning stands the great fateful error that the will is something which produces an effect - that will is a faculty.... Today we know it is merely a word. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) | |||
| A reaction: This is despite Nietzsche's insistence that 'will to power' is the central fact of active existence. The misreading of Nietzsche is to think that this refers to the conscious exercising of a mental faculty. |
| 2.5 | p.38 | 18315 | We get the concept of 'being' from the concept of the 'ego' |
| Full Idea: Being is everywhere thought in, foisted on, as cause; it is only from the conception 'ego' that there follows, derivately, the concept 'being'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) | |||
| A reaction: 'Being' is such a remote abstraction that I doubt whether we can say anything at all meaningful about where it 'comes from'. |
| 2.5 | p.38 | 18314 | In language we treat 'ego' as a substance, and it is thus that we create the concept 'thing' |
| Full Idea: It is the metaphysics of language (that is, of reason) ....which believes in the 'ego', in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and which projects its belief in the ego-substance on to all things - only thus does it create the concept 'thing'. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.5) |
| 2.6 | p.39 | 18316 | The grounds for an assertion that the world is only apparent actually establish its reality |
| Full Idea: The grounds upon which 'this' world has been designated as apparent establish rather its reality - another kind of reality is absolutely undemonstrable. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) |
| 2.6 | p.39 | 18317 | The 'real being' of things is a nothingness constructed from contradictions in the actual world |
| Full Idea: The characteristics which have been assigned to the 'real being' of things are the characteristics of non-being, of nothingness - the 'real world has been constructed out of the contradiction of the actual world. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to be a critique of Hegel, in particular. Could we describe the metaphysics of Nietzsche as 'constructivist'? I certainly think he is underrated as a metaphysician, because the ideas are so fragmentary. |
| 2.6 | p.39 | 18318 | People who disparage actual life avenge themselves by imagining a better one |
| Full Idea: If there is a strong instinct for slandering, disparaging and accusing life within us, then we revenge ourselves on life by means of the phantasmagoria of 'another', a 'better' life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.6) |
| 4.1 | p.42 | 2901 | How could the Church intelligently fight against passion if it preferred poorness of spirit to intelligence? |
| Full Idea: The primitive church fought against the 'intelligent' in favour of the 'poor in spirit': how could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.1) |
| 4.3 | p.43 | 18319 | Love is the spiritualisation of sensuality |
| Full Idea: The spiritualization of sensuality is called 'love': it is a great triumph over Christianity. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.3) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear what 'spiritualization' means, particularly when it comes from Nietzsche. |
| 4.3 | p.44 | 18320 | To renounce war is to renounce the grand life |
| Full Idea: One has renounced grand life when one renounces war. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.3) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a medical orderly in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, so he had seen it at first hand. I think the machine gun and the heavy bomber would have changed his attitude to warfare. He sounds a bit silly now. Nostalgia for the Iliad. |
| 4.4 | p.45 | 2902 | Healthy morality is dominated by an instinct for life |
| Full Idea: All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct for life. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.4) | |||
| A reaction: Sounds right. There is no reasoning against a moral nihilist, because they seem to have no instinct in favour of life. It is the given of morality. |
| 4.5 | p.45 | 18321 | To evaluate life one must know it, but also be situated outside of it |
| Full Idea: One would have to be situated outside life ....[and yet know it thoroughly] ....to be permitted to touch on the problem of the value of life at all. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.5) |
| 4.5 | p.45 | 18322 | When we establish values, that is life itself establishing them, through us |
| Full Idea: When we speak of values we do so under the inspiration and from the perspective of life: life itself evalutes through us when we establish values | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.5) | |||
| A reaction: I love Nietzsche's ideas about the source of values, and his remarks about the value of life. Other thinkers sound so simplistic in comparison. |
| 5.2 | p.48 | 2903 | A good human will be virtuous because they are happy |
| Full Idea: A well-constituted human being, a 'happy one', must perform certain actions and shrink from other actions. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.2) | |||
| A reaction: A nice reversal of basic Aristotle, though Aristotle does say that the truly virtuous person is happy in their actions. Treat unhappy people with caution! |
| 5.5 | p.51 | 18323 | Any explanation will be accepted as true if it gives pleasure and a feeling of power |
| Full Idea: To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. ...First principle: any explanation is better than none. ...Proof by pleasure ('by potency') as criterion of truth. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.5) | |||
| A reaction: By 'proof by pleasure' he means that we find an explanation so satisfying that we cling to it. I assume it is a criterion of rationality (an epistemic virtue) to reject the principle 'any explanation is better than none'. Negative capability. |
| 5.7 | p.53 | 2904 | The doctrine of free will has been invented essentially in order to blame and punish people |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.7) | |||
| A reaction: Michael Frede says free will was invented to feel wholly in charge of our own actions. I doubt whether punishment was the first motive. The will just gives a simple explanation of actions. |
| 5.8 | p.54 | 2905 | 'Purpose' is just a human fiction |
| Full Idea: We invented the concept 'purpose': in reality purpose is lacking. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.8) |
| 5.8 | p.54 | 2906 | By denying God we deny human accountability, and thus we redeem the world |
| Full Idea: We deny God; in denying God we deny accountability; only by doing that do we redeem the world. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.8) |
| 6.1 | p.55 | 18324 | There are no moral facts, and moralists believe in realities which do not exist |
| Full Idea: An insight formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgement has this in common with religious judgement that it believes in realities which do not exist. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 6.1) | |||
| A reaction: Not only a slogan for non-cognitivism, but also a clear statement of the error theory about morality, a century before John Mackie. |
| 6.3 | p.73 | 20133 | The 'motive' is superficial, and may even hide the antecedents of a deed |
| Full Idea: The so-called 'motive' is another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness - something alongside the deed which is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deed than to represent them. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 6.3) | |||
| A reaction: [Leiter gives 'VI.3', but I can't find it] As far as you can get from intellectualism about action, and is more in accord with the picture found in modern neuro-science. No one knows why they are 'interested' in something, and that's the start of it. |
| 7.5 | p.63 | 2908 | There is a need for educators who are themselves educated |
| Full Idea: There is a need for educators who are themselves educated. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 7.5) |
| 7.7 | p.65 | 2909 | Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned |
| Full Idea: Thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 7.7) | |||
| A reaction: Nice. At its deepest level thinking isn't a rational process? |
| 8.05 | p.70 | 18325 | Christians believe that only God can know what is good for man |
| Full Idea: Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for him and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.05) |
| 8.19 | p.78 | 18326 | The beautiful never stands alone; it derives from man's pleasure in man |
| Full Idea: Anyone who tried to divorce the beautiful from man's pleasure in man would at once feel the ground give way beneath him. The 'beautiful in itself' is not even a concept, merely a phrase. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.19) | |||
| A reaction: I love the insult 'not even a concept'! It's like Pauli's 'not even wrong'! |
| 8.33 | p.86 | 20368 | There are no 'individual' persons; we are each the sum of humanity up to this moment |
| Full Idea: The 'individual' ...is an error: he does not constitute a separate entity, an atom, a 'link in the chain', something merely inherited from the past - he constitutes the entire single line 'man' up to and including himself. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.33) | |||
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but you can sort of imagine yourself as a culmination of something, rather than as an isolated entity. I'm not sure how that is supposed to affect my behaviour. |
| 8.35 | p.87 | 18327 | A wholly altruistic morality, with no egoism, is a thoroughly bad thing |
| Full Idea: An 'altruistic' morality, a morality under which egoism languishes - is under all circumstances a bad sign. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.35) |
| 8.36 | p.88 | 18328 | Invalids are parasites |
| Full Idea: The invalid is a parasite on society. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.36) | |||
| A reaction: I'll skip the rest, but you get the idea. The point (with which I sympathise) is that life is primarily about what healthy people do. Something has gone wrong if all we do is worry about the sick and the suffering. |
| 8.36 | p.88 | 18329 | Sometimes it is an error to have been born - but we can rectify it |
| Full Idea: We have no power to prevent ourselves being born: but we can rectify this error - for sometimes it is an error. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.36) |
| 8.37 | p.91 | 18330 | Judging by the positive forces, the Renaissance was the last great age |
| Full Idea: Ages are to be assessed by their positive forces - and by this assessment the age of the Renaissance, so prodigal and so fateful, appears as the last great age. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.37) | |||
| A reaction: I suspect that Nietzsche places art very high among the positive forces. Science and technology showed barely a glimmer during the Renaissance. Mathematics moved very little, Copernicus was ignored, and logic was static. |
| 8.39 | p.93 | 18332 | The creation of institutions needs a determination which is necessarily anti-liberal |
| Full Idea: For institutions to exist there must exist the kind of will, instinct, imperative which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to centuries-long responsibility, to solidarity between succeeding generations. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.39) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds like a lovely challenge to Popper, who seems to have been a liberal who pinned his faith on institutions. |
| 8.39 | p.93 | 18331 | Democracy is organisational power in decline |
| Full Idea: Democracy has always been the declining form of the power to organise. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.39) | |||
| A reaction: Even when Nietzsche is wrong (and who knows, here?) he always challenges you to think! |
| 8.48 | p.102 | 2911 | True justice is equality for equals and inequality for unequals |
| Full Idea: 'Equality for equals, inequality for unequals' - that would be the true voice of justice. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 8.48) |
| 9.2 | p.106 | 2913 | Thucydides was the perfect anti-platonist sophist |
| Full Idea: My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. …Sophist culture, by which I mean realist culture, attains in him its perfect expression. | |||
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 9.2) |