Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm
Friedrich Nietzsche
Ecce Homo how to become yourself
Nietzsche dated the appearance of the book from October 15 (his birthday) to November 4, 1888, but work on the text continued for so long. short term of the conscious life allotted to him, the last passage belonging to “Ecce Homo” is dated January 2, i.e. the day before the disaster. Of course, there could be no question of putting all the material in order; The Archive, represented by E. Förster-Nietzsche, the writer’s sister, and P. Gast, took up this task.
The manuscript was published in 1908. 53 years later, in 1961, E. F. Podahu, through careful work in the Nietzsche Archive, managed to restore full text in chronological sequence of passages. The results turned out to be the most unexpected: it turned out that the book itself simply does not exist and that we are talking about a series of numerous variants and parallels that never received the author’s final edits and composition. Nevertheless, the significance of this publication and the relative integrity of the traditional edition still allows us to include this work in the section of Nietzsche’s books, albeit at the very edge beyond which the section of the draft heritage begins.
The work is published according to the edition: Friedrich Nietzsche, works in 2 volumes, volume 2, Mysl publishing house, Moscow 1990.
Translation - Yu. M. Antonovsky.
PREFACE
In anticipation that the day is not far off when I will have to subject humanity to a test more severe than all that it has ever been subjected to, I consider it necessary to say who I am. Knowing this is essentially not so difficult, for I have “testified of myself” more than once. But the discrepancy between the greatness of my task and the insignificance of my contemporaries was manifested in the fact that I was not heard or even seen. I live on my own credit, and perhaps the fact that I live is just a prejudice?.. I only need to talk to some “cultured” person who spent the summer in the Upper Engadine to be convinced that I am not living ... Under these conditions, an obligation arises, against which my usual restraint and even more the pride of my instincts essentially rebel, namely the obligation to say: Listen to me! for I am such and such. First of all, don't confuse me with others!
I, for example, am not at all a scarecrow, not a moral monster - I am even a nature opposite to the breed of people who have hitherto been revered as virtuous. Between us, it seems to me, this is precisely what makes me proud. I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, I would rather be a satyr than a saint. But read this essay. Perhaps it has no other meaning than to explain the said opposition in a lighter and more benevolent form. "Improving" humanity would be the last thing I could promise. I do not create new idols; let them learn from the ancients how much clay feet cost. My craft is rather to overthrow idols - that’s what I call “ideals”. To the extent that they invented an ideal world, they robbed reality of its value, its meaning, its truth... “The true world” and the “apparent world” - in German: the lied world and reality... The lie of the ideal has existed until now Since then, with the curse that weighed on reality, humanity itself, imbued with this lie, has been perverted down to its deepest instincts, to the deification of values opposite to those that would ensure development, the future, the highest right to the future.
Anyone who knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that this is the air of the heights, healthy air. You have to be made for it, otherwise you risk catching a cold. Ice nearby, monstrous loneliness - but how serenely all things rest in the light of day! how easy it is to breathe! how many things you feel beneath you! - Philosophy, as I have understood and experienced it so far, is a voluntary stay among the ice and mountain heights, a search for everything strange and mysterious in existence, everything that has been until now persecuted by morality. Long experience The knowledge I acquired in this journey through the forbidden taught me to look differently than might have been desirable at the reasons that had hitherto forced me to moralize and create ideals. The hidden history of philosophers, the psychology of their great names, was revealed to me. - That degree of truth that only the spirit can bear, that degree of truth to which only the spirit dares - this is what more and more became for me a real measure of value. Delusion (faith in an ideal) is not blindness, delusion is cowardice... Every conquest, every step forward in knowledge flows from courage, from severity towards oneself, from cleanliness towards oneself... I do not reject ideals, I only put on gloves in their presence... Nitimur in vetitum: with this sign my philosophy will one day triumph, for until now only truth has been thoroughly forbidden.
Among my works, my Zarathustra occupies a special place. I did it to humanity greatest gift of all those done to him so far. This book, with a voice that resounds over millennia, is not only the highest book that has ever existed, a real book of the mountain air - the very fact of man lies in the monstrous distance below it - it is also the deepest book, born from the innermost depths of truth, an inexhaustible well from which every submerged bucket returns to the surface full of gold and goodness. It is not a “prophet” who speaks here, not one of those terrible hermaphrodites of disease and the will to power who are called the founders of religions. We must first of all listen correctly to the voice emanating from these lips, to this chalcyonic tone, so as not to be mistaken in the meaning of its wisdom. "The most quiet words- those who bring the storm. Thoughts coming like a dove rule the world."
The fruits fall from the fig trees, they are juicy and sweet; and as they fall, their red skin is torn off. I am the north wind for ripe fruits.
Thus, like the fruits of a fig tree, these instructions fall to you, my friends; now drink their juice and eat their sweet meat! Autumn is around us, and clear skies, and it’s afternoon.
Here it is not a fanatic who speaks, here they do not “preach”, here they do not demand faith: from the infinite fullness of light and depth of happiness drop after drop falls, word after word - gentle slowness is the tempo of these speeches. Such speeches reach only the most chosen; to be a listener here is an incomparable advantage; not everyone has ears for Zarathustra... Nevertheless, is not Zarathustra a seducer?.. But what does he himself say when he returns to his loneliness for the first time? Exactly the opposite of what some “sage”, “saint”, “savior of the world” or some decadent would say in this case... He not only speaks differently, he himself is different...
My students, now I am leaving alone! Leave now, you too, and alone too! That's how I want it.
Get away from me and defend yourself from Zarathustra! Or better yet: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.
A man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, but be able to hate even his friends.
He repays the teacher poorly who forever remains only a student. And why don’t you want to pluck my wreath?
You respect me; but what will happen if your respect ever falls? Be careful that the statue doesn't kill you!
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what is the use of Zarathustra? You are believers in me; but what is the use of all believers!
You were not yet looking for yourself when you found me. This is what all believers do; That's why faith means so little.
Now I command you to lose me and find yourself; and only when you all renounce me will I return to you...
Friedrich Nietzsche
On that perfect day, when everything reaches maturity and not only the grape bunches turn red, a ray of sunshine fell on my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never have I seen so many good things at once. It was not in vain that I buried my forty-fourth birthday today, I had the right to bury it - what was vital in it was saved, became immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, Songs of Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - solid gifts brought to me this year, even his last quarter! Why shouldn't I be grateful throughout my life? - So, I tell myself my life.
WHY AM I SO WISE
The happiness of my existence, its uniqueness, lies, perhaps, in its fate: expressed in the form of a riddle, I have already died as my father, but as my mother I still live and grow old. This dual origin, as if from the highest and from the lowest rung on the ladder of life, is both a decadent and a beginning - best of all explains, perhaps, the neutrality and non-partisanship that is distinctive for me in relation to the general problem of life. I have a more subtle sense of ascending and descending evolution than anyone else; in this area I am a teacher par excellence - I know both, I embody both. “My father died at the age of thirty-six: he was a fragile, kind and sick creature, destined to pass without a trace - he was more a kind memory of life than life itself. His existence declined in the same year as mine: at thirty-six I had sunk to the lowest limit of my vitality - I was still alive, but I could not see three steps ahead of me. At that time - it was in 1879 - I left my professorship in Basel, lived like a shadow in St. Moritz during the summer, and next winter, the sun-poor winter of my life, I spent like a shadow in Naumburg. This was my minimum: “The Wanderer and His Shadow” arose in the meantime. Without a doubt, I then knew a lot about shadows... In the next winter, my first winter in Genoa, that softening and spiritualization, which was almost due to the extreme impoverishment of blood and muscles, created the "Dawn." The perfect clarity, transparency, even excess of spirit, reflected in the said work, coexisted in me not only with the deepest physiological weakness, but also with the excess of the feeling of pain. In the midst of the torture of three days of continuous headaches, accompanied by painful vomiting of mucus, I had the clarity of a dialectician par excellence, I thought very calmly about things for which, in healthier conditions, I would not have found in myself enough refinement and calmness, I would not have found the audacity of a rock climber. My readers must know to what extent I consider dialectic a symptom of decadence, for example, in famous case: in the case of Socrates. - All painful disturbances of the intellect, even fainting following a fever, remained until now completely alien things to me, the nature of which I first learned only scientifically. My blood is running slow. No one has ever been able to detect my fever. One doctor, who had been treating me for a long time as a nervous patient, finally said: “No! It’s not your nerves that are sick, I myself am only sick with my nerves.” Of course, although it cannot be proven, there is a partial degeneration in me; my body is not affected by any gastric disease, but due to general exhaustion I suffer from extreme weakness of the gastric system. The eye disease, which sometimes led me almost to blindness, was not a cause, but only a consequence; Every time my vitality increased, my vision returned to a certain extent. - A long, too long series of years means recovery for me - it also means, unfortunately, a reverse crisis, decline, periodicity famous family decadence. Need I say after this that I am experienced in matters of decadence? I walked it in every direction, back and forth. This very filigree art of grasping and understanding in general, this index of nuances, this psychology of shades and curves and everything that forms my peculiarity, all this was then first studied and constituted a true gift of the time when everything in me was refined, observation itself and all the organs observations. Consider healthier concepts and values from the point of view of the patient, and vice versa, from the point of view of completeness and self-confidence. rich life to look at the mysterious work of the instinct of decadence - such was my long exercise, my actual experience, and if in anything, it was in this that I became a master. Now I have experience, experience in shifting perspectives: the main reason why “revaluation of values” has, perhaps, become generally accessible to me alone.
Ecce Homo, how to become yourself
Blessed! For this is our height and our homeland: we live here too high and steep for all the unclean and for their thirst. Cast your pure gaze, friends, into the spring of my joy! Will he become confused? He will smile back at you with his purity. On the tree of the future we build our nest; eagles must bring food to us lonely ones in their beaks! Truly, this is not food that even the unclean can eat! They would feel as if they were being consumed by fire, and their throats would be burned. Verily, we do not prepare dwellings here for the unclean! An ice cave would be our happiness for their body and spirit! And, like mighty winds, we want to live above them, neighbors to eagles, neighbors to snow, neighbors to the sun - this is how mighty winds live. And, like the wind, I want to blow among them someday again and take the breath away from their spirit with my spirit - that’s what my future wants. Verily, the mighty wind Zarathustra is for all the lowlands; and he gives this advice to his enemies and everyone who spits and coughs: beware of coughing into the wind!.. WHY AM I SO SMART Why do I know more about some things? Why am I even so smart? I have never thought about questions that are not questions - I have not wasted myself. - For example, I don’t know from experience real religious difficulties. It completely escaped me how I could be “prone to sin.” In the same way, I do not have a reliable criterion for what remorse is: judging by what is being said about this, remorse does not seem to me to be something worthy of respect... I would not want to renounce an action after it has been committed; I would prefer to completely exclude the bad outcome, the consequences, from the question of value. If the outcome goes wrong, it’s too easy to lose true eye on what has been done; remorse seems to me to be a kind of “evil eye.” To honor all the more highly what failed, precisely because it failed—this rather belongs to my morality. - "God", "immortality of the soul", "redemption", " other world" - continuous concepts to which I never gave either attention or time, even as a child - perhaps I was never enough of a child for this? - I know atheism not at all as a result, even less as an event; of course I have it out of instinct. I am too curious, too mysterious, too arrogant to allow myself an answer as rude as a fist. God is an answer as rude as a fist, indelicacy towards us thinkers - in fact, even just rude as fist, a ban for us: you have nothing to think about!.. I am much more interested in the question on which the “salvation of humanity” depends more than on some theological curiosity: the question of nutrition. For everyday use, it can be formulated this way: “how must you eat in order to achieve your maximum strength, virtu in the Renaissance style, virtue, free from morality? ". Only the complete worthlessness of our German culture - its "idealism" - explains to me to some extent why I fell behind in holiness here. This “culture”, which teaches in advance to lose sight of reality in order to pursue exclusively problematic, so-called “ideal” goals, for example, “classical education”, - as if the combination in one concept of “classical” and “German” was not already condemned in advance "! Moreover, it is entertaining - imagine a “classically educated” resident of Leipzig! - In fact, right up to the very mature age I have always eaten poorly, morally speaking, “impersonally”, “disinterestedly”, “altruistically” - for the benefit of the cooks and other brothers in Christ. I very seriously denied, for example, thanks to the Leipzig kitchen, at the same time as the beginning of my study of Schopenhauer (1865), my “will to live”. In order to have insufficient nutrition, you can also ruin your stomach - this problem is solved, as it seemed to me, by the said kitchen, surprisingly happily. (They say that 1866 brought about a change here.) But German cuisine in general - what does it have on its conscience! Soup before lunch (still in Venetian cookhouses books XVI centuries it was called alla tedesca); boiled meat, fatty and mealy cooked vegetables; perversion of flour dishes in a paperweight! If we add to this the downright bestial need for drink after eating by old, and by no means only old, Germans, then the origin of the German spirit becomes clear - from an upset intestine... The German spirit is indigestion, it cannot cope with anything. - But the English diet, which in comparison with German and even French cuisine is something like a “return to nature,” namely to cannibalism, is deeply repugnant to my own instinct; It seems to me that she gives the spirit heavy legs - the legs of Englishwomen... Best cuisine - Piedmontese cuisine. - Alcoholic drinks are harmful to me; A glass of wine or beer a day is quite enough to make my life a “vale of sorrows” - my antipodes live in Munich. Even if we assume that I understood this somewhat late, I still experienced this from early childhood. As a boy, I thought that drinking wine, like smoking tobacco, was at first just the vanity of young people, and later a bad habit. Perhaps Naumburg wine is also to blame for this tart judgment. To believe that wine enlightens, for this I would have to be a Christian, therefore, believe in something that is absurd for me. It's quite strange that with this extreme ability to get upset from small, highly diluted doses of alcohol, I become almost a sailor when it comes to strong doses. Even as a boy, I put my courage into this. To write and also rewrite in one night a long Latin work, with ambition in the pen, striving to imitate in severity and conciseness my model Sallust, and to drink grog of the heaviest caliber while reading Latin - this, when I was a student of the venerable Schulpforta, did not at all contradict my physiology , perhaps, the physiology of Sallust, no matter what the venerable Schulpforta thought about this... Later, towards the middle of my life, I rebelled, however, more and more decisively against all “spiritual” drinks: I, an opponent of vegetarianism from experience, just like a convert I am Richard Wagner, I can quite seriously advise all more spiritual natures to unconditionally abstain from alcohol. Enough water... I prefer areas where it is possible to draw from flowing springs (Nice, Turin, Sils); a small glass follows me everywhere like a dog. In vino veritas: it seems that here again I do not agree with the whole world in the concept of “truth” - for me the spirit floats above the water... A few more instructions from my morality. A hearty lunch is easier to digest than a small lunch. Bringing the stomach into action as a whole is the first condition for good digestion. You need to know the size of your stomach. For the same reason, one should not advise those long lunches, which I call interrupted sacrificial celebrations - these are dinners at table d'hote. - No dinners, no coffee: coffee overshadows. Tea is only useful in the morning. A little, but strong; tea is very harmful and makes him sick for the whole day if he is one degree weaker than necessary. Everyone here has his own measure, often within the narrowest and most delicate limits. In a very irritating climate, tea should not be advised first: you should start an hour before tea with a cup of thick, cleared cocoa butter Sitting as little as possible; not to trust a single thought that was not born in the air and in free movement - when the muscles celebrate their holiday. All prejudices come from the intestines. - Sedentary life- I already said once - there is a true sin against the Holy Spirit. 2 Closely related to the question of nutrition is the question of place and climate. No one is free to live anywhere; and whoever is destined to solve great problems that require all his strength is even very limited in his choice. Climate influence on metabolism, its slowdown and acceleration, goes so far that a mistake in place and climate can not only make a person alien to his task, but even completely hide this task from him: he will never see it. The animal vigor will never become so great in him that he can achieve that feeling of freedom that fills the spirit when a person admits: I alone can do this... Turning into a habit, the slightest lethargy of the intestines is quite enough to turn a genius into something mediocre, something "German"; the German climate alone is enough to deprive a strong intestine, even one prone to heroism, from courage. The rate of metabolism is directly related to the mobility or weakness of the legs of the spirit; after all, “spirit” itself is only a kind of this metabolism. Let them compare the places where there are and were people rich in spirit, where wit, sophistication, anger belonged to happiness, where genius almost necessarily felt at home: they all have remarkably dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem, Athens - these names say something: genius is due to dry air, clear skies - therefore, rapid metabolism, the ability to always again deliver large, even enormous amounts of strength. I have before my eyes a case where a significant and free-spirited spirit, only due to a lack of instinct-subtlety in climatic terms, became a narrow, painstaking specialist and a grouch. I myself could eventually turn to such a case if the illness had not forced me to reason, to think about reason in reality. Now that, as a result of long exercise, I note on myself the influences of climatic and meteorological origin, as if with a subtle and faithful instrument, and even during a short journey, say, from Turin to Milan, I physiologically calculate on myself the change in degrees of humidity of the air, now I I think with fear about the ominous fact that my life until the last ten years, life-threatening years, always took place in inappropriate and precisely forbidden areas for me. Naumburg, Schulpforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig, Basel, Venice - all these are unhappy places for my physiology. If I have no pleasant recollection at all of my whole childhood and youth, it would be folly to attribute it to so-called moral causes—for example, to the undeniable lack of a satisfactory society: for this lack exists even now, as it always existed, but did not prevent me from being cheerful and brave. Ignorance in physiologicis - damned “idealism” - this is the real misfortune in my life, the unnecessary and stupid in it, something from which nothing good has grown, for which there is no reconciliation, for which there is no compensation. I explain to myself all my mistakes, all big ones, as the consequences of this “idealism.”
“Ecce Homo”: Big Think columnist Scotty Hendricks studied the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche and told why the philosopher considered himself a “psychologist without equal,” which of his ideas about our consciousness and behavior really anticipated the discoveries of the “science of the soul,” why, according to Nietzsche, trying to suppress the urges of the "beast within" is a waste of time and how the philosopher's idea of the unconscious and man who creates himself influenced the work of Freud, Jung, Carl Rogers and Alfred Adler. We publish the main theses.
Friedrich Nietzsche considered himself an unsurpassed psychologist, and in his work “Ecce Homo. How to become yourself" he even remarked:
… in my writings a psychologist who knows no equal speaks, this, perhaps, is the first conviction to which a good reader comes ⓘ Per. Yu. M. Antonovsky..
He then claims that he is the first philosopher to practice real psychology.
Perhaps he was not far from the truth, since he was often philosophical works can be read as works on psychology, and many of his philosophical concepts can be applied as psychological ones. While he has received little credit from psychologists (except in very rare cases), Nietzsche's ideas foreshadowed some of the most revolutionary ideas in the history of psychology.
Let's look at some of them.
Nietzsche's approach to psychology begins with a very radical idea: a person cannot even hope to know everything about his mind. The idea that every person has subconscious thoughts, feelings, impulses and repressed memories is not new to us, but even the idea that a person - a "rational animal" - may not be able to understand how his own brain works. own mind, could shock those who first became acquainted with the philosopher’s texts.
Nietzsche also understood that external influences can have serious consequences on the human psyche. In my work “Human, all too human. A book for free minds" Nietzsche explains:
Direct introspection is not enough for us to know ourselves: we need history, because the past flows within us in hundreds of waves.
Thus, the philosopher says that our deeper selves are influenced by much more factors than meets the eye. Among such factors, he notes culture and history, as well as upbringing and a variety of human aspirations and desires.
Often people try to hide the fact (even from themselves) that they have animal impulses and needs. Nietzsche believed that this cannot be written off. This is what Zarathustra called “the beast within” - the desire for sex and the tendency towards aggression, which were suppressed by archaic morality, which considered these impulses to be evil. Nietzsche viewed such repression as a waste of potential energy. He argued that it would be much more productive to recognize that we have these primitive needs, and there is nothing wrong with them if we can harness and use them.
However, for what purpose can our natural inclinations be used?
In short, according to Nietzsche, with the goal of self-overcoming. The philosopher talked a lot about human self-development, and his works reflect this. Nietzsche viewed consciousness as a collection of such desires and aspirations. These impulses and needs often turn out to be directly opposite to each other, and the person himself is responsible for curbing them all, organizing and using them to achieve his goals.
Even so, Nietzsche sees it as a choice between motives, where one is stronger than any other. He does not consider a person independent of his needs. Self-organization is overcoming all impulses and needs that are part of the person himself.
The exact nature of Nietzsche's ideas is difficult to determine, since he was not entirely consistent and often even contradicted himself. In progress "Twilight of the Idols, or how one philosophizes with a hammer" he praises the self-made man. He noted that his favorite prototype of the superman, Goethe, “disciplined himself completely, he created myself".
At the same time, in his work “Beyond good and evil. Prelude to the philosophy of the future" Nietzsche notes:
...At the core of our being, there, “at the very bottom,” of course, there is something that cannot be taught, a certain granite of spiritual fate, a predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. With every cardinal problem, something constant says: “It’s me.” ⓘ Per. N. Polilova.
Nietzsche took a middle path, accepting that it is possible to create ourselves within the limits set by our nature, culture and historical forces. The question of how much real freedom one has ordinary person in choosing who he should become remains controversial, especially since Nietzsche did not believe in human free will, like all the other existentialists.
Nietzsche's frequently cited work "The Will to Power" also associated with the idea of self-creation. In his book Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christian, Walter Kaufmann explains:
The will to power is understood as the desire to overcome oneself. It is absolutely clear that this is not accidental. The will to power is mentioned again in the text much later, and then again in the chapter “On Self-Overcoming.” After this she is mentioned one more time in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The will to power is conceived as the will to overcome oneself.
Truly strong man will be able to use their conflicting desires and needs to bring them together and achieve their only goal, determined by them for their own reasons, despite the fact that all the time they are under the influence of their own nature. This concept of self-development finds echoes in humanistic psychology.
How do we apply this?
Ask yourself: are you in control of your desires? Are you able to ignore temptation in order to achieve a more meaningful goal? If you can't, Dr. Nietzsche will tell you that you still have to overcome some of your desires that are undermining your ability to become all you can be.
Nietzsche was skeptical about the benefits of self-reflection for most people. However, he saw it as a worthy pursuit for individuals who met his insanely high standards. If we can dare such blasphemy and apply its ideas to all people without exception, then we can say that Starting point for personal growth is an attempt to know yourself: what needs and impulses you have and what you don’t, what your potential is, what impulses you want to stimulate or curb. Although for Nietzsche there is a limit to self-knowledge, this is still a good start.
Has modern psychology advanced Nietzsche's ideas?
As for Freud, it is difficult to say how much Nietzsche influenced him. Freud claimed that he never read Nietzsche, but this seems unlikely given Nietzsche's popularity as well as the similarity of several of their ideas about the subconscious. Psychologist Ernest Jones, who knew Freud, wrote that Freud both praised Nietzsche and claimed that he had never read his work. There was also an assumption that Freud deliberately did not read Nietzsche so that he would not be accused of plagiarism. Others claim that Freud read Nietzsche and then lied about it.
Freud's student Carl Jung was influenced by Nietzsche's ideas when he created his psychological system. However, he did not openly admit this. He used some of the terms coined by Nietzsche in his writings and even lectured on Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Nietzsche's The Will to Power was later used as the basis for Alfred Adler's individual psychology. Nietzsche's concept of how man creates himself was developed, if not exact form, then in a general sense in the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers.
Nietzsche's position as a philosopher is well known, but his contributions to psychology are often ignored. His insight into how people are motivated, how much a person is influenced by their subconscious mind, and how we can become the people we want to become is certainly of great benefit to humans. His own fate and madness may perhaps cast a shadow on the idea of what a sane person who follows his ideas can achieve. However, there remains no doubt that his ideas can become a light in the darkness of minds, which he was one of the first to seriously study.
How to become yourself
Preface
In anticipation that the day is not far off when I will have to subject humanity to a test more severe than all that it has ever been subjected to, I consider it necessary to say, Who am I. Knowing this, in essence, is not so difficult, for I have “testified of myself” more than once. But the discrepancy between the greatness of my task and nonentity of my contemporaries it manifested itself in the fact that they did not hear me or even see me. I live on my own credit, and perhaps the fact that I live is just a prejudice?.. I only need to talk to some “cultured” person who spent the summer in the Upper Engadine to be convinced that I Not I live... Under these conditions, an obligation arises, against which, in essence, my usual restraint and even more the pride of my instincts rebel, namely the obligation to say: Listen to me! for I am such and such. First of all, don't confuse me with others!
I, for example, am not at all a scarecrow, not a moral monster - I am even a nature opposite to the breed of people who have hitherto been revered as virtuous. Between us, it seems to me, this is precisely what makes me proud. I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, I would rather be a satyr than a saint. But read this essay. Perhaps it has no other meaning than to explain the said opposition in a lighter and more benevolent form. "Improving" humanity would be the last thing I could promise. I do not create new idols; let them learn from the ancients how much clay feet cost. My craft is rather - overthrow idols - This is what I call “ideals”. To the extent that you thought the ideal world, they have robbed reality of its value, its meaning, its truth... “True world” and “apparent world” - in German: world slandered and reality... Lie the ideal was still a curse that weighed on reality; humanity itself, imbued with this lie, was perverted right down to its deepest instincts, to the deification of values, reverse topics which would ensure development, future, higher right for the future.
Anyone who knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that this is the air of the heights, healthy air. You have to be made for it, otherwise you risk catching a cold. Ice nearby, monstrous loneliness - but how serenely all things rest in the light of day! how easy it is to breathe! how much you feel below myself! - Philosophy, as I have understood and experienced it so far, is a voluntary stay among the ice and mountain heights, a search for everything strange and mysterious in existence, everything that has been until now persecuted by morality. The long experience I acquired in this wandering through forbidden, taught me to look differently than might have been desirable at the reasons that had hitherto forced me to moralize and create ideals. It opened up to me hidden history of philosophers, psychology of their great names. - That degree of truth, which only the spirit endures that degree of truth to which only dares spirit - this is what more and more became for me the real measure of value. Delusion (belief in an ideal) is not blindness, delusion is cowardice… Every conquest, every step forward in knowledge flows out out of courage, out of severity towards oneself, out of cleanliness towards oneself... I do not reject ideals, I just put on gloves in their presence... Nitimur in vetitum: by this sign my philosophy will one day triumph, for until now only truth has been thoroughly forbidden.
Among my works, my Zarathustra occupies a special place. With it I gave humanity the greatest gift of all that have been given to it so far. This book with a voice that sounds over millennia is not only the highest book that has ever existed, a real book of mountain air - the very fact that man lies in a monstrous distance below her - she is also a book the deepest born from the innermost depths of truth, an inexhaustible well, from where every submerged bucket returns to the surface full of gold and kindness. It is not a “prophet” who speaks here, not one of those terrible hermaphrodites of disease and the will to power who are called the founders of religions. First of all it is necessary to do it right listen in the voice coming from these lips, in this chalkyonic tone, so as not to be mistaken in the meaning of his wisdom. “The quietest words are those that bring the storm. Thoughts coming like a dove rule the world.” -
The fruits fall from the fig trees, they are juicy and sweet; and as they fall, their red skin is torn off. I am the north wind for ripe fruits.
Thus, like the fruits of a fig tree, these instructions fall to you, my friends; now drink their juice and eat their sweet meat! Autumn is around us, and clear skies, and it’s afternoon. -
Here it is not a fanatic who speaks, here they do not “preach”, here they do not demand faith: from the infinite fullness of light and depth of happiness drop after drop falls, word after word - gentle slowness is the tempo of these speeches. Such speeches reach only the most chosen; to be a listener here is an incomparable advantage; not everyone has ears for Zarathustra... Nevertheless, not seducer is Zarathustra?.. But what does he himself say when he returns to his loneliness for the first time? Exactly the opposite of what some “sage”, “saint”, “savior of the world” or some décadent would say in this case... He not only speaks differently, he himself is different...
My students, now I am leaving alone! Leave now, you too, and alone too! That's how I want it.
Get away from me and defend yourself from Zarathustra! Or better yet: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you.
A man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, but be able to hate even his friends.
He repays the teacher poorly who forever remains only a student. And why don’t you want to pluck my wreath?
You respect me; but what will happen if ever will fall your respect? Be careful that the statue doesn't kill you!
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what is the use of Zarathustra? You are the believers in me; but what is the use of all believers!
You were not yet looking for yourself when you found me. This is what all believers do; That's why faith means so little.
Now I command you to lose me and find yourself; but only when you all deny me, I'll get back to you...
Friedrich Nietzsche
On that perfect day, when everything reaches maturity and not only the grape bunches turn red, a ray of sunshine fell on my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never have I seen so many good things at once. It was not in vain that I buried my forty-fourth birthday today, I have was right bury him - what was vital in him was saved, became immortal. The first book “The Revaluation of All Values”, “The Songs of Zarathustra”, “Twilight of the Idols”, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - these are continuous gifts brought to me this year, even its last quarter! Why shouldn't I be grateful throughout my life?- So, I tell myself my life.
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A man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, but be able to hate even his friends.
He repays the teacher poorly who forever remains only a student. And why don’t you want to pluck my wreath?
You respect me; but what will happen if your respect ever falls? Be careful that the statue doesn't kill you!
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what is the use of Zarathustra? You are believers in me; but what is the use of all believers!
You were not yet looking for yourself when you found me. This is what all believers do; That's why faith means so little.
Now I command you to lose me and find yourself; and only when you all renounce me will I return to you...
Friedrich Nietzsche
On that perfect day, when everything reaches maturity and not only the grape bunches turn red, a ray of sunshine fell on my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never have I seen so many good things at once. It was not in vain that I buried my forty-fourth birthday today, I had the right to bury it - what was vital in it was saved, became immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, Songs of Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - continuous gifts brought to me this year, even its last quarter! Why shouldn't I be grateful throughout my life? - So, I tell myself my life.
WHY AM I SO WISE
The happiness of my existence, its uniqueness, lies, perhaps, in its fate: expressed in the form of a riddle, I have already died as my father, but as my mother I still live and grow old. This dual origin, as if from the highest and from the lowest rung on the ladder of life, is both a decadent and a beginning - best of all explains, perhaps, the neutrality and non-partisanship that is distinctive for me in relation to the general problem of life. I have a more subtle sense of ascending and descending evolution than anyone else; in this area I am a teacher par excellence - I know both, I embody both. “My father died at the age of thirty-six: he was a fragile, kind and sick creature, destined to pass without a trace - he was more a kind memory of life than life itself. His existence declined in the same year as mine: at thirty-six I had sunk to the lowest limit of my vitality - I was still alive, but I could not see three steps ahead of me. At that time - it was in 1879 - I left the professorship in Basel, lived the summer like a shadow in St. Moritz, and spent the next winter, the sun-poor winter of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg. This was my minimum: “The Wanderer and His Shadow” arose in the meantime. Without a doubt, I then knew a lot about shadows... In the next winter, my first winter in Genoa, that softening and spiritualization, which was almost due to the extreme impoverishment of blood and muscles, created the "Dawn." The perfect clarity, transparency, even excess of spirit, reflected in the said work, coexisted in me not only with the deepest physiological weakness, but also with the excess of the feeling of pain. In the midst of the torture of three days of continuous headaches, accompanied by painful vomiting of mucus, I had the clarity of a dialectician par excellence, I thought very calmly about things for which, in healthier conditions, I would not have found in myself enough refinement and calmness, I would not have found the audacity of a rock climber. My readers may know to what extent I consider dialectic to be a symptom of decadence, for example in the most famous case: the case of Socrates. - All painful disturbances of the intellect, even fainting following a fever, remained until now completely alien things to me, the nature of which I first learned only scientifically. My blood is running slow. No one has ever been able to detect my fever. One doctor, who had been treating me for a long time as a nervous patient, finally said: “No! It’s not your nerves that are sick, I myself am only sick with my nerves.” Of course, although it cannot be proven, there is a partial degeneration in me; my body is not affected by any gastric disease, but due to general exhaustion I suffer from extreme weakness of the gastric system. The eye disease, which sometimes led me almost to blindness, was not a cause, but only a consequence; Every time my vitality increased, my vision returned to a certain extent. - A long, too long series of years means recovery for me - it also means, unfortunately, a reverse crisis, decline, the periodicity of a certain kind of decadence. Need I say after this that I am experienced in matters of decadence? I walked it in every direction, back and forth. This very filigree art of grasping and understanding in general, this index of nuances, this psychology of shades and curves and everything that forms my peculiarity, all this was then first studied and constituted a true gift of the time when everything in me was refined, observation itself and all the organs observations. To consider healthier concepts and values from the point of view of the sick, and vice versa, from the point of view of the fullness and self-confidence of a richer life to look at the mysterious work of the instinct of decadence - such was my long exercise, my actual experience, and if in anything, then in this I became a master. Now I have experience, experience in shifting perspectives: the main reason why “revaluation of values” has, perhaps, become generally accessible to me alone.
Apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also its opposite. My proof, by the way, is that I have always instinctively chosen the right remedies against painful conditions: whereas a decadent always chooses remedies that are harmful to himself. As summa summarum, I was healthy; as a particularity, as a special occasion, I was a decadent. The energy for absolute loneliness, the rejection of the usual conditions of life, the effort on oneself so as not to take care of oneself anymore, not to serve oneself and not allow oneself to be treated, all this reveals an unconditional instinct-confidence in understanding what was then most necessary. I pulled myself together, I made myself newly healthy: the condition for this is that every physiologist will agree with this to be fundamentally healthy. A creature that is typically sick cannot become healthy, much less can it make itself healthy; for a typically healthy person, on the contrary, illness can even be an energetic stimulus to life, to prolong life. This is how this long period of illness actually appears to me now: I seemed to have rediscovered life, included myself in it, I found taste in all good and even insignificant things, while others cannot easily find taste in them - I made it out of my will to health, to life, my philosophy... Because - and this should be noted - I ceased to be a pessimist in the years of my lowest vitality: the instinct of self-healing forbade me to the philosophy of poverty and despondency... And what is the essence of success! The fact that a successful person is pleasing to our external senses, that he is carved from hard, tender and at the same time fragrant wood. He only likes what is useful to him; his pleasure, his desire ceases when the measure of what is useful is exceeded. He divines healing remedies against injuries, he turns harmful accidents to his advantage; what doesn't destroy him makes him stronger. He instinctively collects his sum from everything he sees, hears, experiences: he himself is the principle of selection, he lets a lot pass by. He is always in his company, whether he is surrounded by books, people or landscapes; he honors by choosing, by allowing, by trusting. He reacts to all kinds of irritation slowly, with the slowness that long-term caution and deliberate pride have developed in him - he experiences the irritation that comes to him, but he is far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in "misfortune" nor in "guilt"; he copes with himself, with others, he knows how to forget - he is strong enough to turn everything to his own benefit. Well, I am the opposite of decadent: for I have just described myself.
This double series of experiences, this accessibility to supposedly separated worlds is repeated in my nature in all respects - I am a double, I also have a “second” person besides the first. And, perhaps, there is also a third... Already my origin allows me to penetrate with my gaze beyond all perspectives determined only by locality, only by nationality; It doesn’t cost me any effort to be a “good European.” On the other hand, I may be more German than today's Germans, ordinary imperial Germans, can be - I am the last anti-political German. And yet, my ancestors were Polish nobles: from them there are many racial instincts in my body, who knows? in the end even liberum veto. When I think about how often even the Poles themselves address me on the road as a Pole, how rarely they mistake me for a German, it may seem that I belong only to the marked Germans. However, my mother, Franziska Ehler, is in any case something very German; as well as my paternal grandmother, Erdmut Krause. The latter spent her entire youth in good old Weimar, not without communicating with Goethe’s circle. Her brother, Professor of Theology Krause in Königsberg, was called after Herder's death to Weimar as General Superintendent. It is possible that their mother, my great-grandmother, appears under the name "Mutgen" in the diary of young Goethe. She remarried Superintendent Nietzsche in Eulenburg; in that day great war 1813, when Napoleon and his general staff entered Eulenburg on October 10, she was relieved of her burden. She, as a Saxon, was a great admirer of Napoleon; It is possible that this passed on to me as well. My father, born in 1813, died in 1849. Before taking up the duties of parish priest of the community of Röcken near Lützen, he lived for several years in the Altenburg Palace and was there the teacher of four princesses. His students were the Queen of Hanover, the wife of Grand Duke Constantine, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg and Princess Therese of Saxe-Altenburg. He was filled with deep reverence for the Prussian king Frederick William IV, from whom he received the church parish; the events of 1848 saddened him extremely. I myself, born on the birthday of the said king, October 15, received, as it should have, the Hohenzollern name - Friedrich Wilhelm. In any case, there was one benefit in choosing this day: my birthday was a holiday throughout my childhood. - I consider it a great advantage that I had such a father: it also seems to me that this explains all my other advantages - minus life, the great affirmation of life. First of all, I do not need intention at all, but only simple waiting, in order to involuntarily enter into the world of lofty and fragile things: I am at home there, my deepest passion becomes free there for the first time. The fact that I paid almost the price of my life for this advantage is not, of course, an unfair deal. - In order to understand anything in my Zarathustra, it is necessary, perhaps, to be in the same conditions as me, to stand with one foot on the other side of life...
I have never known the art of turning against myself - I also owe this to my incomparable father - even in those cases when it seemed to me extremely important. Even, no matter how un-Christian it may seem, I am not turned against myself; you can turn my life around as you please, and rarely, in fact only once, will traces of ill will be discovered towards me - but, perhaps, there will be too many traces of good will... My experiments, even with those on whom everyone makes unsuccessful experiments, speak without exception in their favor; I tame every bear; I also make jesters well-behaved. For seven years, when I taught Greek in the senior class of the Basel Pedagogium, I never had a reason to resort to punishment; The laziest ones were the most diligent ones. I am always above chance; I don't have to be prepared to control myself. From any instrument, even if it is as out of tune as only a “human” instrument can be out of tune, I manage, if I am not sick, to extract something that can be listened to. And how often have I heard from the “instruments” themselves that they have never sounded like this before... Best of all, perhaps, I heard this from that unforgivably early deceased Heinrich von Stein, who once, after carefully asking permission, appeared at three day in Sils Maria, explaining to everyone that he had not come for the Engadine. This great person, mired with all the impetuous naivety of a Prussian junker in a Wagnerian swamp (and, moreover, also in a Dühringian one!), was in these three days as if reborn by the stormy wind of freedom, like someone who suddenly rises to his height and receives wings. I repeated to him that this is the result good air here above, that this happens to everyone who knowingly rises to a height of 6000 feet above Bayreuth - but he did not want to believe me... If, despite this, more than one small or large offense was sinned against me, then the reason for this was not “will,” least of all evil will: rather I could—I just pointed this out—complain about good will, which has brought considerable disorder into my life. My experiences give me the right to distrust in general the so-called “disinterested” instincts, the “love of one’s neighbor,” which is always ready to interfere in word and deed. For me, she in itself is a weakness, isolated case inability to resist irritations - compassion is called a virtue only among decadents. I reproach those who are compassionate for the fact that they easily lose modesty, respect and a delicate sense of distance, that compassion in the blink of an eye reeks of the mob and it resembles, to the point of confusion, bad manners - that compassionate hands can, on occasion, destructively invade a great destiny , in solitude after wounds, in the preferential right to heavy guilt. I consider overcoming compassion to be an aristocratic virtue: in “The Temptation of Zarathustra” I described the case when a great cry for help reaches him, when compassion, like the last sin, descends on him and wants to force him to betray himself. Here to remain a master, here the height of his task to keep pure in front of the lower and short-sighted impulses operating in so-called selfless actions, this is the test, perhaps the last test that Zarathustra must pass - the true proof of his strength...
Also in another respect, I am once again my father and, as it were, a continuation of his life after too early death. Like everyone who has never lived among his equals and to whom the concept of “retribution” is as inaccessible as the concept of “ equal rights“, I forbid myself in those cases when a small or very large stupidity is committed against me, any measure of counteraction, any measure of defense, as well as any defense, any “justification”. My method of retribution is to rather, send something smart after stupidity: in this way, perhaps, you can still catch up with it. To put it in a parable: I send a pot of jam to get rid of a sour story... As soon as someone treats me badly, I “take revenge” for it , you can be sure of this: I will soon find a reason to express my gratitude to the “villain” (by the way, even for the crime) - or to ask him for something that obliges him to do more than give anything... Also It seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter is still more polite, still more honest than silence. Those who are silent almost always lack subtlety and courtesy of the heart; silence is an objection; swallowing of necessity creates a bad character - it spoils even the stomach All silent people suffer from poor digestion. - Apparently, I would not like rudeness to be rated too low; it is the most humane form of contradiction and, among modern effeminacy, one of our first virtues. - For those who are rich enough, it is even happiness to bear injustice. A God who would descend to earth would not do anything other than injustice - take upon himself not punishment, but guilt, only this would be divine.
Freedom from ressentiment, a clear understanding of ressentiment - who knows how much gratitude I owe to my long illness for this! The problem is not so simple: you have to survive it, based on strength and based on weakness. If anything should be generally objected to the state of illness, to the state of weakness, it is that the real instinct of healing weakens in it, and this is the instinct of defense and attack in man. You can't get rid of anything, you can't cope with anything, you can't push away anything - everything offends. People and things come annoyingly close, experiences strike too deeply, memories appear as a festering wound. The painful state is itself a kind of ressentiment. - The patient has only one great healing remedy against it - I call it Russian fatalism, that resigned fatalism with which a Russian soldier, when a military campaign is too burdensome for him, finally lies down in the snow. Don’t accept anything anymore, don’t allow anything into yourself, don’t take it into yourself - don’t react at all anymore... Deep meaning This fatalism, which is not always only the courage to die, but also the preservation of life under the most life-threatening circumstances, expresses a weakening of metabolism, its slowdown, a kind of will to hibernation. A few more steps further in this logic - and you come to a fakir, sleeping for weeks in a coffin... Since you would be exhausted too quickly, if you reacted at all, you no longer react at all - this is logic. But nothing burns out faster than from the affects of ressentiment. Annoyance, painful sensitivity to insults, powerlessness in revenge, desire, thirst for revenge, poisoning in every sense - all this for the exhausted is undoubtedly the most dangerous race reactions: rapid waste of nervous strength, painful increase in harmful secretions, for example bile into the stomach, are caused by all this. Ressentiment is something in itself forbidden to the patient - his evil: unfortunately, also his most natural inclination. - The profound physiologist Buddha understood this. His “religion,” which could rather be called hygiene, so as not to confuse it with such pitiable things as Christianity, made its action dependent on the victory over ressentiment: freeing the soul from it is the first step towards recovery. “Enmity does not end with enmity, enmity ends with friendship” - this is at the beginning of the Buddha’s teaching: it is not morality that says so, physiology says so. - Ressentiment, born from weakness, is most harmful to the weakest - in the opposite case, when a rich nature is assumed, ressentiment is an extra feeling, a feeling over which remaining master is already proof of wealth. Who knows the seriousness with which my philosophy undertook the fight against the vengeful last-born feelings, right up to the doctrine of “free will” - my fight against Christianity is only special case her, - he will understand why it is here that I clarify my personal behavior, my instinct-confidence in practice. During the days of decadence I forbade them as harmful; as soon as life again became rich and proud enough, I forbade them to myself as something that was beneath me. That “Russian fatalism” that I spoke about manifested itself in me in the fact that for years I stubbornly clung to almost unbearable situations, localities, homes, societies, since they were given to me by chance - it was better than changing them, than to feel them changeable is better than to rebel against them... To hinder myself in this fatalism, to forcibly excite myself, I considered then mortally harmful: truly, this was always mortally dangerous. - Accepting yourself as fate, not wanting yourself to be “different” - this is the greatest understanding in such circumstances.
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