Friedrich Nietzsche

The will to power

Book two: Critique of highest Values

302 (Nov. 1887-March 1888)
If only human values would be put back once and for all into the places in which alone they belong: as loafers’ values. Many species of animals have already vanished; if man too should vanish nothing would be lacking in the world. One must be sufficient of a philosopher to admire this nothing, too (-Nil admirari)*

303 (Spring 1888)
Man a little, eccentric species of animal, which-fortunately -has its day; all on earth a mere moment, an incident, an exception without consequences, something of no importance to the general character of the earth; the earth itself, like every star, a hiatus between two nothingnesses, an event without plan, reason, will, self-consciousness, the worst kind of necessity, stupid necessity- Something in us rebels against this view; the serpent vanity says to us: “all that must be false, for it arouses indignation could all that not be merely appearance? And man, in spite of all, as Kant says-“

*Admire nothing-usually quoted in the sense of “wonder at nothing (from Horace, Epistles, I.6.1.).

Friedrich Nietzsche

The will to power

Preface (Nov. 1887-March 1888)

1 Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness, that means cynically and with innocence.

2 What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.

3 He that speaks here, conversely, has done nothing so far but reflect: a philosopher and solitary by instinct, who has found his advantage in standing aside and outside, in patience, in procrastination, in staying behind; as a spirit of daring and experiment that has already lost its way once in every labyrinth of the future; as a soothsayer-bird spirit who looks back when relating what will come; as the first perfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself.

Editie translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale