Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  20

  Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naïvety rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgement is therewith defined. – Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something ‘ugly’. His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride – they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.… In the one case as in the other we draw a conclusion: its premises have been accumulated in the instincts in tremendous abundance. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: that which recalls degeneration, however remotely, produces in us the judgement ‘ugly’. Every token of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness, every kind of unfreedom, whether convulsive or paralytic, above all the smell, colour and shape of dissolution, of decomposition, though it be attenuated to the point of being no more than a symbol – all this calls forth the same reaction, the value judgement ‘ugly’. A feeling of hatred then springs up; what is man then hating? But the answer admits of no doubt: the decline of his type. He hates then from out of the profoundest instinct of his species; there is horror, foresight, profundity, far-seeing vision in this hatred – it is the profoundest hatred there is. It is for its sake that art is profound…

  21

  Schopenhauer. – Schopenhauer, the last German of any consequence (– who is a European even like Goethe, like Hegel, like Heinrich Heine, and not merely a parochial, a ‘national’ one), is for a psychologist a case of the first order: namely, as a mendacious attempt of genius to marshal, in aid of a nihilistic total devaluation of life, the very counter-instances, the great self-affirmations of the ‘will to live’, the exuberant forms of life. He interpreted in turn art, heroism, genius, beauty, grand sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, tragedy, as phenomena consequent upon the ‘denial’ of or the thirst to deny the ‘will’ – the greatest piece of psychological false-coinage in history, Christianity alone excepted. Looked at more closely he is in this merely the heir of the Christian interpretation: but with this difference, that he knew how to make what Christianity had rejected, the great cultural facts of mankind, and approve of them from a Christian, that is to say nihilistic, point of view (– namely as roads to ‘redemption’, as preliminary forms of ‘redemption’, as stimulants of the thirst for ‘redemption’…).

  22

  To take a particular instance: Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with a melancholy ardour – why, in the last resort? Because he sees it in a bridge upon which one may pass over, or acquire a thirst to pass over.… It is to him redemption from the ‘will’ for minutes at a time – it lures on to redemption for ever.… He values it especially as redeemer from the ‘focus of the will’, from sexuality – in beauty he sees the procreative impulse denied.… Singular saint! Someone contradicts you, and I fear it is nature. To what end is there beauty at all in the sounds, colours, odours, rhythmic movements of nature? what makes beauty appear? – Fortunately a philosopher also contradicts him. No less an authority than the divine Plato (– so Schopenhauer himself calls him) maintains a different thesis: that all beauty incites to procreation – that precisely this is the proprium of its effect, from the most sensual regions up into the most spiritual…

  23

  Plato goes further. He says, with an innocence for which one must be Greek and not ‘Christian’, that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if Athens had not possessed such beautiful youths: it was the sight of them which first plunged the philosopher’s soul into an erotic whirl and allowed it no rest until it had implanted the seed of all high things into so beautiful a soil. Another singular saint! – one doesn’t believe one’s ears, even supposing one believed Plato. One sees, at least, that philosophizing was different in Athens, above all public. Nothing is less Greek than the conceptual cobweb-spinning of a hermit, amor intellectualis dei* in the manner of Spinoza. Philosophy in the manner of Plato should rather be defined as an erotic contest, as a further development and inward intensification of the old agonal gymnastics and their presuppositions.… What finally emerged from this philosophical eroticism of Plato? A new artistic form of the Greek agon, dialectics. – I further recall, opposing Schopenhauer and to the honour of Plato, that the entire higher culture and literature of classical France also grew up on the soil of sexual interest. One may seek everywhere in it for gallantry, sensuality, sexual contest, ‘woman’ – one will never seek in vain…

  24

  L’art pour l’art.† – The struggle against purpose in art is always a struggle against the moralizing tendency in art, against the subordination of art to morality. L’art pour l’art means: ‘the devil take morality!’ – But this very hostility betrays that moral prejudice is still dominant. When one has excluded from art the purpose of moral preaching and human improvement it by no means follows that art is completely purposeless, goalless, meaningless, in short l’art pour l’art – a snake biting its own tail. ‘Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!’ – thus speaks mere passion. A psychologist asks on the other hand: what does all art do? does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does it not highlight? By doing all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations.… Is this no more than an incidental? an accident? Something in which the instinct of the artist has no part whatever? Or is it not rather the prerequisite for the artist’s being an artist at all.… Is his basic instinct directed towards art, or is it not rather directed towards the meaning of art, which is life? towards a desideratum of life? – Art is the great stimulus to life: how could it be thought purposeless, aimless, l’art pour l’art? One question remains: art also brings to light much that is ugly, hard, questionable in life – does it not thereby seem to suffer from life? – And there have indeed been philosophers who lent it this meaning: Schopenhauer taught that the whole object of art was to ‘liberate from the will’, and he revered tragedy because its greatest function was to ‘dispose one to resignation’. – But this – as I have already intimated – is a pessimist’s perspective and ‘evil eye’ – : one must appeal to the artists themselves. What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Does he not display precisely the condition of fearlessness in the face of the fearsome and questionable? – This condition itself is a high desideratum: he who knows it bestows on it the highest honours. He communicates it, he has to communicate it if he is an artist, a genius of communication. Bravery and composure in the face of a powerful enemy, great hardship, a problem that arouses aversion – it is this victorious condition which the tragic artist singles out, which he glorifies. In the face of tragedy the warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalias; whoever is accustomed to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man extols his existence by means of tragedy – for him alone does the tragic poet pour this draught of sweetest cruelty. –

  25

  To put up with men, to keep open house in one’s heart – this is liberal, but no more than liberal. One knows hearts which are capable of noble hospitality, which have curtained windows and closed shutters: they keep their best rooms empty. Why do they so? – Because they await guests with whom one does not have to ‘put up’…

  26

  We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average, medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking. – From a moral code for deaf-mutes and other philosophers.

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  ‘This picture is enchanting fair!’*… The literary woman, unsatisfied, agitated
, desolate in heart and entrails, listening every minute with painful curiosity to the imperative which whispers from the depths of her organism ‘aut liberi aut libri’:† the literary woman, cultured enough to understand the voice of nature even when it speaks Latin, and on the other hand vain enough and enough of a goose to say secretly to herself in French ‘je me verrai, je me lirai, je m’extasierai et je dirai: Possible, que j’aie eu tant d’esprit?’…‡

  28

  The ‘impersonal’ take the floor. – ‘We find nothing easier than being wise, patient, superior. We drip with the oil of forbearance and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we forgive everything. For that very reason we ought to discipline ourselves a little; for that very reason we ought to cultivate a little emotion, a little emotional vice, from time to time. It may be hard for us; and among ourselves we may perhaps laugh at the appearance we thus present. But what of that! We no longer have any other mode of self-overcoming available to us: this is our asceticism, our penance’.… Becoming personal – the virtue of the ‘impersonal’…

  29

  From a doctorate exam. – ‘What is the task of all higher education?’ – To turn a man into a machine. – ‘By what means?’ – He has to learn how to feel bored. – ‘How is that achieved?’ – Through the concept of duty. – ‘Who is his model?’ – The philologist: he teaches how to grind.* – ‘Who is the perfect man?’ – The civil servant. – ‘Which philosophy provides the best formula for the civil servant?’ – Kant’s: the civil servant as thing in itself set as judge over the civil servant as appearance. –

  30

  The right to stupidity. – The wearied and slow-breathing worker, good-natured, letting things take their course: this typical figure, who is now, in the Age of Work (and of the ‘Reich’!), encountered in all classes of society, is today laying claim even to art, including the book and above all the journal – how much more to the beauties of nature, to Italy.… The man of the evening, with the ‘wild instincts lulled to sleep’ of which Faust speaks.† requires the health resort, the seaside, the glaciers, Bayreuth.‡… In ages like this, art has a right to pure folly§ – as a kind of holiday for the spirit, the wits and the heart. Wagner understood that. Pure folly is a restorative…

  31

  Another problem of diet. – The means by which Julius Caesar defended himself against sickliness and headache: tremendous marches, the simplest form of living, uninterrupted sojourn in the open air, continuous toil – these, broadly speaking, are the universal preservative and protective measures against the extreme vulnerability of that subtle machine working at the highest pressure which is called genius. –

  32

  The immoralist speaks. – Nothing offends a philosopher’s taste more than man when he expresses desires.… When the philosopher sees man only in his activity, when he sees this bravest, cunningest, toughest of animals straying even into labyrinthine calamities, how admirable man seems to him! He encourages him.… But the philosopher despises desiring man, and the ‘desirable’ man too – he despises all the desiderata, all the ideals of man. If a philosopher could be a nihilist, he would be one because he finds nothingness behind all the ideals of men. Or not even nothingness merely – but only the worthless, the absurd, the sick, the cowardly, the weary, dregs of all kinds from the cup of his life after he has drained it.… How does it come about that man, so admirable as a reality, deserves no respect when he expresses desires? Does he have to atone for being so able as a reality? Does he have to compensate for his activity, for the exertion of will and hand involved in all activity, with a relaxation in the imaginary and absurd? – The history of his desiderata has hitherto been the partie honteuse* of man: one should take care not to read too long in it. What justifies man is his reality – it will justify him eternally. How much more valuable an actual man is compared with any sort of merely desired, dreamed of, odious lie of a man? with any sort of ideal man?… And it is only the ideal man who offends the philosopher’s taste.

  33

  The natural value of egoism. – The value of egoism depends on the physiological value of him who possesses it: it can be very valuable, it can be worthless and contemptible. Every individual may be regarded as representing the ascending or descending line of life. When one has decided which, one has thereby established a canon for the value of his egoism. If he represents the ascending line his value is in fact extraordinary – and for the sake of the life-collective, which with him takes a step forward, the care expended on his preservation, on the creation of optimum conditions for him, may even be extreme. For the individual, the ‘single man’, as people and philosophers have hitherto understood him, 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.… If he represents the descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, sickening (– sickness is, broadly speaking, already a phenomenon consequent upon decay, not the cause of it), then he can be accorded little value, and elementary fairness demands that he takes away as little as possible from the well-constituted. He is not better than a parasite on them…

  34

  Christian and anarchist. – When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of declining strata of society, demands with righteous indignation ‘his rights’, ‘justice’, ‘equal rights’, he is only acting under the influence of his want of culture, which prevents his understanding why he is really suffering – in what respect he is impoverished, in life.… A cause-creating drive is powerful within him: someone must be to blame for his feeling vile.… His ‘righteous indignation’ itself already does him good; every poor devil finds pleasure in scolding – it gives him a little of the intoxication of power. Even complaining and wailing can give life a charm for the sake of which one endures it: there is a small dose of revenge in every complaint, one reproaches those who are different for one’s feeling vile, sometimes even with one’s being vile, as if they had perpetrated an injustice or possessed an impermissible privilege. ‘If I am canaille, you ought to be so too’: on the basis of this logic one makes revolutions. – Complaining is never of any use: it comes from weakness. Whether one attributes one’s feeling vile to others or to oneself – the Socialist does the former, the Christian for example the latter – makes no essential difference. What is common to both, and unworthy in both, is that someone has to be to blame for the fact that one suffers – in short, that the sufferer prescribes for himself the honey of revenge as a medicine for his suffering. The objectives of this thirst for revenge as a thirst for pleasure vary according to circumstances: the sufferer finds occasions everywhere for cooling his petty revengefulness – if he is a Christian, to say it again, he finds them in himself.… The Christian and the anarchist – both are décadents. – And when the Christian condemns, calumniates and befouls the ‘world’, he does so from the same instinct from which the Socialist worker condemns, calumniates and befouls society: even the ‘Last Judgement’ is still the sweet consolation of revenge – the revolution, such as the Socialist worker too anticipates, only conceived of as somewhat more distant.… Even the ‘Beyond’ – why a Beyond if not as a means of befouling the Here-and-Now?…

  35

  A criticism of décadence morality. – An ‘altruistic’ morality, a morality under which egoism languishes – is under all circumstances a bad sign. This applies to individuals, it applies especially to peoples. The best are lacking when egoism begins to be lacking. To choose what is harmful to oneself, to be attracted by ‘disinterested’ motives, almost constitutes the formula for décadence. ‘Not to seek one’s own advantage’ – that is merely a moral figleaf for a quite different, namely physiological fact: ‘I no longer know how to find my advantage’.… Disgregation of the instincts! – Man is finished when he becomes altruistic. – Instead of saying simply ‘I am no longer worth anything’, the moral lie in the mouth of the décadent says: ‘Nothing is worth anything – life
is not worth anything’.… Such a judgement represents, after all, a grave danger, it is contagious – on the utterly morbid soil of society it soon grows up luxuriously, now in the form of religion (Christianity), now in that of philosophy (Schopen-hauerism). In some circumstances the vapours of such a poison-tree jungle sprung up out of putrefaction can poison life for years ahead, for thousands of years ahead…

  36

  A moral code for physicians. – The invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society. Physicians, in their turn, ought to be the communicators of this contempt – not prescriptions, but every day a fresh dose of disgust with their patients.… To create a new responsibility, that of the physician, in all cases in which the highest interest of life, of ascending life, demands the most ruthless suppression and sequestration of degenerating life – for example in determining the right to reproduce, the right to be born, the right to live.… To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one’s own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there, likewise an actual evaluation of what has been desired and what achieved in life, an adding-up of life – all of this in contrast to the pitiable and horrible comedy Christianity has made of the hour of death. One should never forget of Christianity that it has abused the weakness of the dying to commit conscience-rape and even the mode of death to formulate value judgements on men and the past! – Here, every cowardice of prejudice notwithstanding, it is above all a question of establishing the correct, that is physiological evaluation of so-called natural death: which is, after all, also only an ‘unnatural’ death, an act of suicide. One perishes by no one but oneself. Only ‘natural’ death is death for the most contemptible reasons, an unfree death, a death at the wrong time, a coward’s death. From love of life one ought to desire to die differently from this: freely, consciously, not accidentally, not suddenly overtaken.… Finally, a piece of advice for messieurs the pessimists and other décadents. We have no power to prevent ourselves being born: but we can rectify this error – for it is sometimes an error. When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.… Society – what am I saying! life itself derives more advantage from that than from any sort of ‘life’ spent in renunciation, green-sickness and other virtues – one has freed others from having to endure one’s sight, one has removed an objection from life.… Pessimism, pur, vert* proves itself only by the self-negation of messieurs the pessimists: one must take their logic a step further, and not deny life merely in ‘will and idea’, as Schopenhauer did – one must first of all deny Schopenhauer.… Pessimism, by the by, however contagious it may be, nevertheless does not add to the morbidity of an age or a race in general: it is the expression of this morbidity. One succumbs to it as one succumbs to cholera: one’s constitution must already be sufficiently morbid. Pessimism does not of itself make a single additional décadent, I recall that statistics show that the years in which cholera rages do not differ from other years in the total number of deaths.