25 (Spring-Fall 1887) On the genesis of the nihilist.- It is only late that one musters the courage for what one really knows.14 That I have hitherto been a thorough-going nihilist, I have admitted to myself only recently: the energy and radicalism with which I advanced as a nihilist deceived me about this basic fact. When one moves toward a goal it seems impossible that “goal-lessness as such” is the principle of our faith.
297 Do not wish to see prematurely. -As long as we are experiencing something, we must give ourselves over to the experience and close our eyes, and thus, while still in it, not make ourselves already the observer of it. That would, of course, disturb our good digestion of the experience; instead of a bit of wisdom, we would take away a bit of indigestion.
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.
163 After a great victory.– What is best about a great victory is that it liberates the victor from the fear of defeat. “Why not be defeated some time, too?., he says to himself; “Now I am rich enough for that..
166 Always in our company.- Whatever in nature and in history is of my own kind, speaks to me, spurs me on, and cormforts me; the rest I do not hear or forget right away. We are always only in our own company.
179 Thoughts.– Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings-always darker, emptier. and simpler.
The following short aphorism from the book Human All Too Human has no hidden traps or meanings I just like the way it flows. You can read the original at the bottom, but the nice thing about the English language combined with the characters of the translators is that you can enjoy it in several forms and choose the one you like. Let me know which one you like the most. I personally prefer Hollingdale translations.
-488 Composure in action. – Just as a waterfall grows slower and more lightly suspended as it plunges down, so the great man of action usually acts with greater composure than the fierceness of his desires before he acted had led us to expect. (Translated by R. J. Hollingdale, 1986)
-488 Calm in action. As a waterfall becomes slower and more floating as it plunges, so the great man of action will act with greater calm than could be expected from his violent desire before the deed. (Translated by Marion Faber, 1984)
-488 Equanimity in action. -As a waterfall moves more slowly and floats more leisurely as it plunges downward, so a great man of action tends to act with more equanimity than his tempestuous desire prior to acting would have led us to expect. (Translated by Gary Handwerk, 1995)
488. Calmness in action.—As a cascade in its descent becomes more deliberate and suspended, so the great man of action usually acts with more calmness than his strong passions previous to action would lead one to expect. (Translated by Helen Zimmern, 1909)
-488 The calm indeed. — Just as a waterfall becomes slower and more floating as it falls, so the great man of deeds tends to act with more calmness, which is what his stormy desire before the deed led to expect. (Google translate, 2024)
-488 The calm indeed. Just as a waterfall becomes slower and more flowing as it falls, so the great man of deeds tends to act with more calmness, which is not what his stormy desire before the deed led to expect. (Translated by Chat GPT 3.5, 2024)
I told ChatGPT that it was the same translation as Googles translation, it apologized and gave me a new translation:
The tranquility, indeed. Just as a waterfall slows and becomes more graceful in its descent, similarly, the person of great deeds tends to act with more calmness, contrary to what his turbulent desire before the deed might have suggested. (Translated by Chat GPT 3.5, 2024)
Die Ruhe in der That. — Wie ein Wasserfall im Sturz langsamer und schwebender wird, so pflegt der grosse Mensch der That mit mehr Ruhe zu handeln, also seine stürmische Begierde vor der That es erwarten liess.
444 War. – Against war it can be said: it makes the victor stupid, the defeated malicious. In favour of war: through producing these two effects it barbarizes and therefore makes more natural; it is the winter or hibernation time of culture, mankind emerges from it stronger for good and evil. From Human All Too Human
This aphorism is more self-explanatory. I don’t know if Nietzsche celebrates the act of war; he was a medic in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, but I don’t know if he was confronted by the violence of war or only by the result of exploding bombshells. Most people who knew Nietzsche say that he was a friendly man, kind and polite. Not the typical war monger or brut you might think of when reading some of his works. I think that war was, for Nietzsche, more of an abstraction than the gruesome reality it is. There have always been periods through history where society suddenly takes a few steps forward, and this might often seem to happen after a war, but it is hard to unravel what happens in a society, especially when something as gruesome as a war is going on. I know that for many people, war is still something to celebrate, probably for other reasons than Nietzsche does, but for me, raised at the end of the Cold War by a passivist mother, war is something you want to avoid.
I think that Nietzsche is more right when he says: it makes the victor stupid, the defeated malicious, but that is also more of an open door. He also says that war barbarizes and therefore makes more natural. I am not sure what he wants to say, but nature is, of course, barbarous, with no morals or thoughts of the future and past to guide it. He goes on to say: it is the winter or hibernation time of culture, mankind emerges from it stronger for good and evil. Again, I don’t think that during a war, progression stops or hibernates, as he implies*. He ends with the idea that we get stronger out of it, as I discussed earlier, but the last words are for good and evil, so maybe he balances it out again, and has he merely put us on the wrong foot when we read this aphorism. As if we reacted with our own “barbarous” mind. With Nietzsche, you never know
*I just started reading Victor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, A book that originates in the Nazzi death camps, and it has helped society to move forward in several ways. No hibernation in the epicenter of that war.
6o To desire to revenge and then to carry out revenge means to be the victim of a vehement attack of fever which
then, however, passes: but to desire to revenge without possessing the strength and courage to carry out revenge means to carry about a chronic illness, a poisoning of body and soul. Morality, which looks only at intentions, assesses both cases equally; in the ordinary way the former case is assessed as being the worse (on account of the evil consequences which the act of revenge will perhaps produce). Both evaluations are short sighted. From Human All Too Human
Reading philosophy can be challenging. Reading Nietzsche can be challenging, too. There are many reasons why I read a lot of Nietzsche. First of all, he just spoke to me; it’s like we enjoy the same music and stick with each other to enjoy it; there is no higher philosophical reason for it. I didn’t know anything about philosophy when I started reading it, so I could not be attracted to anyone’s philosophy. One thing that I still appreciate is that Nietzsche, for the most part, asks questions through all kinds of answers. He is not trying to tell you how the world works through elaborate systems spanning hundreds of pages. He writes aphorisms from one sentence to a couple of pages that are all loosely connected with the ones before and after. You can read his books from beginning to end but you can also open one and just read one of the aphorisms and think about it.
Italic = Nietzsche’s text Bolt = my interpretation and rewording
To desire to revenge and then to carry out revenge means to be the victim of a vehement attack of fever which then, however, passes: but to desire to revenge without possessing the strength and courage to carry out revenge means to carry about a chronic illness, a poisoning of body and soul. If you act directly on the urge to take revenge, that feeling that comes over you and clouds your judgment like a fever does, you will be freed of that feeling to take revenge. If you don’t act on that urge but take it with you, it might consume you from the inside out. Morality, which looks only at intentions, assesses both cases equally; Morality for Nietzsche is often closely related to Christianity and, in this case, the thought of revenge or the act of revenge is the same for an all-knowing God. in the ordinary way the former case is assessed as being the worse (on account of the evil consequences which the act of revenge will perhaps produce). The ordinary way is how secular society judges you, and acting on an urge is worse than not acting on it. Both evaluations are short sighted. And like Nietzsche tends to do, he throws a spanner in the works and forces you to think. The moralistic view is short sighted because of the judgment of an urge but the “ordinary way” because of the outcome of acting on that urge? In this case, it might help to read the aphorism before this one because, at this moment (late in the evening after a day’s work outside), I don’t see the other cause where the “short sighted(nes)” alludes to. Maybe he wants to tell us that it is, in both cases, a disease that makes us feel like taking revenge, or better said, we don’t choose to feel what we feel, and we don’t choose how we react; we react. Our circumstances determine how we react; there is no I that acts.
Several notes from Nietzsche written in 1987 are to be found in the book The Will to Power, a collection of his notes published after his death and not meant for publication.
What does nihilism mean? That the highest values evaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; “why?” finds no answer.
The supreme values in whose service man should live, especially when they were very hard on him and exacted a high price – these social values were erected over man to strengthen their voice, as if they were commands of God, as “reality,” as the “true” world, as a hope and future world. Now that the shabby origin of these values is becoming clear, the universe seems to have lost value, seems “meaningless”-but that is only a transitional stage.
Values and their changes are related to increases in the power of those positing the values. The measure of unbelief, of permitted “freedom of the spirit” as an expression of an increase in power. “Nihilism” an ideal of the highest degree of powerfulness of the spirit, the over-richest life-partly destructive, partly ironic.
23. Whether the Adherents of the Doctrine of Free Will have a Right to Punish?—Men whose vocation it is to judge and punish try to establish in every case whether an evil-doer is really responsible for his act, whether he was able to apply his reasoning powers, whether he acted with motives and not unconsciously or under constraint. If he is punished, it is because he preferred the worse to the better motives, which he must consequently have known. Where this knowledge is wanting, man is, according to the prevailing view, not responsible—unless his ignorance, e.g. his ignorantia legis, be the consequence of an intentional neglect to learn what he ought: in that case he already preferred the worse to the better motives at the time when he refused to learn, and must now pay the penalty of his unwise choice. If, on the other hand, perhaps through stupidity or shortsightedness, he has never seen the better motives, he is generally not punished, for people say that he made a wrong choice, he acted like a brute beast. The intentional rejection of the better reason is now needed before we treat the offender as fit to be punished.
473 The intellect cannot criticize itself, precisely because it cannot be compared with different kinds of intellects, and because its ability to acquire knowledge would be manifested only in the face of ‘true reality’; i.e. in order to criticize the intellect, we should have to be superior beings who possessed ‘absolute knowledge’. This already presupposes that, apart from all perspectival kinds of observation and sensory and intellectual appropriation, there is something, an ‘in-itself’ – but the psychological derivation of the belief in things forbids our speaking of ‘things in themselves’.
38 There has recently been a great deal of idle talk using a loose and altogether inapplicable term: pessimism. Everywhere the talk is about pessimism, and everywhere people (occasionally even sensible people!) are wrangling over a specific question which they think admits of an answer: whether optimism or pessimism is correct. What they do not understand, although it is palpable, is that pessimism is not a problem but a symptom, that the term should be replaced by nihilism, that the question of whether it is better to be or not to be, is itself an illness, a decline in strength, a kind of hypersensitivity. The pessimistic movement is only an expression of physiological décadence . . .
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.).
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
116 The everyday Christian. – If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God, universal sinfulness, election by divine grace and the danger of everlasting damnation were true, it would be a sign of weakmindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one’s own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of one’s eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.
104 Of one substance. – If we are of one substance with a book or a work of art we are quite convinced it must be excellent, and we are offended if others find it ugly, over-spiced or inflated.
63 Belated pregnancy. – Those who have come to their works and deeds without understanding how, generally go around afterward all the more pregnant with them: as if in order to prove after the fact that these are their children and not those of chance.
105 Language and feeling. -We see that language has not been given to us for the communication of feeling in the way that all simple humans are ashamed of looking for words to describe their deeper agitations: such things are expressed only in actions and even here they blush if someone else seems to guess their motives. Among poets, who were in general denied this shame by the gods, the nobler ones are nonetheless more monosyllabic in the language of feeling and betray a certain constraint: whereas the true poets of feeling are mostly shame less in practical life.
127 Against the faulters of brevity. -A brief saying can be the fruit and harvest of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field and has not yet reflected upon it at all sees in all brief sayings something embryonic, not without a disparaging sign to the author for having placed upon his table something so immature and unripe.
Nochrisis 