Nietzsche Beyond Good & Evil

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Beyond Good and Evil

Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

PrefaceI On The Prejudices Of PhilosophersII The Free SpiritIII The Religious NatureIV Maxims & InterludesV On the Natural History of MoralsVI We ScholarsVII Our VirtuesVII Peoples and FatherlandsIX What is NobleX EpodeStatus : Complete (Full text)Some chapters still need editing out scanning errors

PREFACE

Supposing truth is a woman—what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion thatall philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert aboutwomen? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which theyhave usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methodsfor winning a woman's heart? What is certain is that she has not allowed herself to bewon—and today every kind of dogmatism is left standing dispirited and discouraged.If it is left standing at all! For there are scoffers who claim that it has fallen, that alldogmatism lies on the ground—even more, that all dogmatism is dying.Speaking seriously, there are good reasons why all philosophical dogmatizing,however solemn and definitive its airs used to be, may nevertheless have been nomore than a noble childishness and tyronism. And perhaps the time is at hand whenit will be comprehended again and again how little used to be sufficient to furnish thecornerstone for such sublime and unconditional philosophers' edifices as thedogmatists have built so far: any old popular superstition from time immemorial (likethe soul superstition which, in the form of the subject and ego superstition, has noteven yet ceased to do mischief); some play on words perhaps, a seduction bygrammar, or an audacious generalization of very narrow, very personal, very human,all too human facts. The dogmatists' philosophy was, let us hope, only a promise across millennia—asastrology was in still earlier times when perhaps more work, money, acuteness, andpatience were lavished in its service than for any real science so far: to astrology andits "supra-terrestrial" claims we owe the grand style of architecture in Asia and Egypt.It seems that all great things first have to bestride the earth in monstrous andfrightening masks in order to inscribe themselves in the hearts of humanity witheternal demands: dogmatic philosophy was such a mask; for example, the Vedantadoctrine in Asia and Platonism in Europe.Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be conceded that the worst,most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was a dogmatist's error—

namely, Plato's invention of the pure spirit and the good as such. But now that it isovercome, now that Europe is breathing freely again after this nightmare and at leastcan enjoy a healthier—sleep, we, whose task is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of allthat strength which has been fostered by the fight against this error. To be sure, itmeant standing truth on her head and denying perspective, the basic condition of alllife, when one spoke of spirit and the good as Plato did. Indeed, as a physician onemight ask: "How could the most beautiful growth of antiquity, Plato, contract such adisease? Did the wicked Socrates corrupt him after all? Could Socrates have been thecorrupter of youth after all? And did he deserve his hemlock?But the fight against Plato or, to speak more clearly and for "the people," the fightagainst the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millennia—for Christianity is Platonismfor "the people"—has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit the like of which has never yet existed on earth: with so tense a bow we can now shoot for themost distant goals. To be sure, European man experiences this tension as need anddistress; twice already attempts have been made in the grand style to unbend thebow—once by means of Jesuitism, the second time by means of the democraticenlightenment which, with the aid of freedom of the press and newspaper-reading,might indeed bring it about that the spirit would no longer experience itself so easilyas a "need." (The Germans have invented gunpowder—all due respect for that!—butthen they made up for that: they invented the press.) But we who are neither Jesuitsnor democrats, nor even German enough, we good Europeans and free, very freespirits—we still feel it, the whole need of the spirit and the whole tension of the bow.And perhaps also the arrow, the task, and—who knows?—the goal—Sils Maria, Upper Engadine June 1885

Part One : On the Prejudices of Philosophers

The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulnessof which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect - what questions has thiswill to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That isa long story even now - and yet it seems as if it had scarcely begun. Is it any wonderthat we should finally become suspicious, lose patience, and turn away impatiently?that we should finally learn from this Sphinx to ask questions, too? Who is it reallythat puts questions to us here? What in us really wants "truth"?Indeed we came to a long halt at the question about the cause of this will - until wefinally came to a complete stop before a still more basic question. We asked aboutthe value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? anduncertainty? even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth came before us - or was it we who came before theproblem? Who of us is Oedipus here? Who the Sphinx? It is a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and question marks.And though it scarcely seems credible, it finally almost seems to us as if the problemhad never even been put so far - as if we were the first to see it, fix it with our eyes,and risk it. For it does involve a risk, and perhaps there is none that is greater."How could anything originate out of its opposite? for example, truth out of error? orthe will to truth out of the will to deception? or selfless deeds out of selfishness? orthe pure and sunlike gaze of the sage out of lust? Such origins are impossible;

whoever dreams of them is a fool, indeed worse; the things of highest value musthave another, peculiar origin - they cannot be derived from this transitory, seductive,deceptive, paltry world from this turmoil of delusion and lust. Rather from the lap of Being, the intransitory, the hidden god, the 'thing-in-itself' - there must be their basis,and nowhere else." This way of judging constitutes the typical prejudgment and prejudice which giveaway the metaphysicians of all ages; this kind of valuation looms in the backgroundof all their logical procedures; it is on account of this "faith" that they troublethemselves about "knowledge," about something that is finally baptized solemnly as"the truth." The fundamental faith of the metaphysicians is the faith in oppositevalues. It has not even occurred to the most cautious among them that one mighthave a doubt right here at the threshold where it was surely most necessary - even if they vowed to themselves, "de omnibus dubitandum."For one may doubt, first, whether there are any opposites at all, and secondlywhether these popular valuations and opposite values on which the metaphysiciansput their seal, are not perhaps merely foreground estimates, only provisionalperspectives perhaps even from some nook, perhaps from below, frog perspective asit were, to borrow an expression painters use. For all the value that the true, thetruthful, the selfless may deserve, it would still be possible that a higher and morefundamental value for life might have to be ascribed to deception, selfishness, andlust. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of these good andrevered things is precisely that they are insidiously related, tied to and involved withthese wicked, seemingly opposite things - maybe even one with them in essence.Maybe!But who has the will to concern himself with such dangerous maybes? For that, onereally has to wait for the advent of a new species of philosophers such as havesomehow another and converse taste and propensity from those we have known sofar - philosophers of the dangerous "maybe" in every sense.And in all seriousness: I see such new philosophers coming up.After having looked long enough between the philosopher's lines and fingers, I say tomyself: by far the greater part of conscious thinking must still be included amonginstinctive activities, and that goes even for philosophical thinking. We have torelearn here, as one has had to relearn about heredity and what is "innate." As theact of birth deserves no consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, so "being conscious" is not in any decisive sense the opposite of what isinstinctive: most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided andforced into certain channels by his instincts.Behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there standvaluations or, more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a certaintype of life. For example, that the definite should be worth more than the indefinite,and mere appearance worth less than "truth" - such estimates might be, in spite of their regulative importance for us, nevertheless mere foreground estimates, a certainkind of niaiserie which may be necessary for the preservation of just such beings aswe are. Supposing, that is, that not just man is the "measure of things." The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment; inthis respect our new language may sound strangest. The question is to what extent itis life-promoting, life serving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating.And we are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgments (which includethe synthetic judgments a priori) are the most indispensable for us; that withoutaccepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely inventedworld of the unconditional and self-identical, without a constant falsification of theworld by means of numbers, man could not live - that renouncing false judgmentswould mean renouncing life and a denial of life. To recognize untruth as a condition of

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