ISBN: 0-8032-83687
My rating: 75/100
See Book Notes for other books I have read. If you like my notes, go buy it!
Key Points and Themes
At one point in the intro the translator Walter Kaufmann said something like, “Countless commentaries have been made on Shakespeare, but how valuable would it have been to have ‘Shakespeare on Shakespeare?’ This book is Nietzsche on Nietzsche”. For that reason, it’s not really something you would want to read unless you have already read most of his books. This was the very last book that Nietzsche wrote, and he was in the process of making final edits to the drafts when he had his psychotic break. I ended up not having a ton of notes on this book since at this point in my life I have read almost all of the works cited here and digested and internalized the thoughts so they don’t pop out to me anymore.
- [In this book Nietzsche] does not once complain. He is thankful for his illness and tells us how it made his life better. PP The philosophical and religious literature of the world does not contain many saying that equal the wisdom and nobility of Zarathustra’s challenge: “If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.”
- Despite the fact that Nietzsche wrote two entire books against the philosophy of Wagner, in this book he thanks him profusely and has a truly genuine appreciation for the time that they spent together.
- His animal vigor has never become great enough for him to attain that freedom which overflows into the most spiritual regions and allows one to recognize: this only I can do. [Nietzsche is encouraging you to find the one task that only you are capable of completing.]
- [need to] say No as rarely as possible. To detach oneself, to separate oneself from anything that would make it necessary to keep saying No. … Our great expenses are composed of the most frequent small ones. Warding off, not letting things come close, involves an expenditure – let nobody deceive himself about this – energy wasted on negative ends.
- Another counsel of prudence and self-defense is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one to suspend, as it were, one’s “freedom” and initiative and to become a mere reagent.
- I cannot remember that I ever tried hard – no trace of struggle can be demonstrated in my life; I am the opposite of a heroic nature. “Willing” something, “striving” for something, envisaging a “purpose,” a “wish” – I know none of this from my experience.
- The reason Nietzsche’s philosophy was so impactful was not just the cause of a superior intellect (and he had one of the greatest intellects of the past 1000 years), but that he lived his philosophy first and then wrote it down. His thoughts about life were not birthed in some stolid dusty back room of a library, they were birthed on long walks to mountaintops in mountain air. One cannot be a revolutionary without living like a revolutionary.
Editor’s Introduction
Ecce Homo – the words Pilate had, according to John (19:5), spoken to Jesus: “Behold the man!”
There is no “if only” in this autobiography, and there are no excuses. A man who was in physical agony much of his adult life and warned by his doctors not to read or write much lest he strain his half-blind eyes, does not once complain. He is thankful for his illness and tells us how it made his life better. PP The philosophical and religious literature of the world does not contain many saying that equal the wisdom and nobility of Zarathustra’s challenge: “If you have an enemy, do not requite him evil with good, for that would put him to shame. Rather prove that he did you some good.”
Preface
Error (faith in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice. PP Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.
Why I Am So Wise
2
For a typically healthy person, conversely, being sick can even become an energetic stimulus for life, for living more.
4
My experiences entitle me to be quite generally suspicious of the so-called “selfless” drives, of all “neighbor love” that is ready to give advice and go into action.
5
It also seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter are still more benign, more decent than silence. Those who remain silent are almost always lacking in delicacy and courtesy of the heart. Silence is an objection; swallowing things leads of necessity to a bad character – it even upsets the stomach. All who remain silent are dyspeptic.
6
Against all this the sick person has only one great remedy: I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without revolt which is exemplified by a Russian soldier who, finding a campaign too strenuous, finally lies down in the snow. No longer to accept anything at all, no longer to take anything, no longer to absorb anything – to cease reacting altogether. PP This fatalism is not always merely the courage to die; it can also preserve life under the most perilous conditions by reducing the metabolism, slowing it down, as a kind of will to hibernate. PP Because one would use oneself up too quickly if one reacted in any was, one does not react at all any more: this is the logic. Nothing burns up faster than the affects of ressentiment.
Accepting oneself as if fated, not wishing oneself “different” – that is in such cases great reason itself.
7
My practice of war can be summed up in four propositions. First: I only attach causes that are victorious; I may even wait until they become victorious.
Second: I only attach causes against which I would not find allies, so that I stand alone – so that I compromise myself alone. – I have never taken a step publicly that did not compromise me: that is my criterion of doing right.
Third: I never attach persons.
Fourth: I only attack things when every personal quarrel is excluded, when any background of bad experiences is lacking. On the contrary, attack is in my case a proof of good will, sometimes even of gratitude. … When I wage war against Christianity I am entitled to this because I have never experienced misfortunes and frustrations from that quarter – the most serious Christians have always been well disposed toward me. I myself, an opponent of Christianity de rigueur, am far from blaming individuals for the calamity of millennia.
Why I Am So Clever
1
Later, around the middle of life, to be sure, I decided more and more strictly against all “spirits”.
(That is, alcohol, and the like)
Sit as little as possible; give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely – in which the muscles are not celebrating a feast, too. All prejudices come from the intestines. PP The sedentary life – as I have said once before – is the real sin against the holy spirit.
2
The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it. His animal vigor has never become great enough for him to attain that freedom which overflows into the most spiritual regions and allows one to recognize: this only I can do.
During my Basel period my whole spiritual diet, including the way I divided up my day, was a completely senseless abuse of extraordinary resources, without any new supply to cover this consumption in any way, without even any thought about consumption and replenishment. Any refined self-concern, any protection by some commanding instinct was lacking; I simply posited myself as equal to any nobody; it was a “selflessness,” an oblivion of all distance between myself and others that I shall never forgive myself.
3
The choice of nutrion; the choice of climate and place: the third point at which one must not commit a blunder at any price is the choice of one’s own kind of recreation.
a reading room makes me sick. (My note: interesting!)
I believe only in French culture and consider everything else in Europe today that calls itself “culture” a misunderstanding – not to speak of German culture.
The fact that I do not read but love Pascal, as the most instructive victim of Christianity.
contemporary Paris: tenatively – I name Messieurs Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp, Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre, or, Guy de Maupassant. … Stendhal … Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He took away from me the best atheistical joke that precisely I might have made: “God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.”
Paul Bourget
Pierre Loti was the pen name of Louis Marie Julien Viaud (1850-1923)
Gyp was the pen name of Sibylle Gabrielle Marie Anoinette Riqueti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville (1850-1932)
Henri Meilhac (1831-1897)
Anatole France was the pen name of Jacques Anatole Thibault (1844-1924)
Fancois Elie Jules Lemaitre (1853-1914)
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
4
The highest concept of the lyrical poet was given to me by Heinrich Heine.
I know no more heart-rending reading than Shakespeare: what must a man have suffered to have such a need of being a buffoon!
(Kaufmann’s footnote says, “A hint for readers of Ecce Homo.” Which is a tidbit of commentary that he thinks Nietzsche is resonating deeply with Shakespeare’s suffering, and the natural consequence of those who suffer greatly – they develop a need for buffoonery! In Hamlet we see intense irony, mockery, and exaggeration in the drama. In Ecce Homo and other writings, we see Nietzsche takes an exaggerated and comical tone sometimes to make his points, for example, “Why I Am So Clever”.)
8 On creating one’s environment
In all these matters – in the choice of nutrition, of place and climate, of recreation – an instinct of self-preservation issues its commandments, and it gains its most unambiguous expression as an instinct of self-defense. Not to see many things, not to hear many things, not to permit many things to come close – first imperative of prudence, first proof that one is no mere accident but a necessity. The usual word for this instinct of self-defense is taste. It is commands us not only to say No when Yes would be “selfless” but also to [need to] say No as rarely as possible. To detach oneself, to separate oneself from anything that would make it necessary to keep saying No. The reason in this that when defensive expenditures, be they ever so small, become the rule and habit, they entail an extraordinary and entirely superfluous impoverishment. Our great expenses are composed of the most frequent small ones. Warding off, not letting things come close, involves an expenditure – let nobody deceive himself about this – energy wasted on negative ends.
Suppose I stepped out of my house and found, instead of quiet, aristocratic Turin, a small German town: my instinct would have to cast up a barrier to push back everything that would assail it from this pinched and flattened, cowardly world. Or I found a German big city – this built-up vice where nothing grows, where everything, good or bad, is imported. Wouldn’t this compel me to become a hedgehog?
Another counsel of prudence and self-defense is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one to suspend, as it were, one’s “freedom” and initiative and to become a mere reagent. As a parable I choose association with books. Scholars who at bottom do little nowadays but thumb books – philologists, at a moderate estimate, about 200 a day – ultimately lose entirely their capacity t think for themselves. When they don’t thumb, they don’t think. They respond to a stimulus (a thought they have read) whenever they think – in the end, they do nothing but react. Scholars spend all of their energies on saying Yes and No, on criticism of what others have thought – they themselves no longer think.
[my note: one of the grandmaster moves of Nietzsche was to not only write his own thoughts, but was from the very start to think his own thoughts rather than think through someone else’s]
The instinct of self-defense has become worn-out in them; otherwise they would resist books. The scholar – the decadent.
I have seen this with my own eyes: gifted natures with a generous and free disposition, “read to ruin” in their thirties – merely matches that one has to strike to make them emit sparks – “thoughts”.
Early in the morning, when day breaks, when all is fresh, in the dawn of one’s strength – to read a book at such times is simply depraved!
9
To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion what one is.
Considered in this way, my life is simply wonderful. For the task of a revaluation of all values more capacities may have been needed than have ever dwelt together in a single individual – above all, even contrary capacities that had to be kept from disturbing, destroying one another. An order of rank among these capacities; distance; the art of separating without setting against one another; to mix nothing, to “reconcile” nothing; a tremendous variety that is nevertheless the opposite of chaos – that was the precondition, the long, secret work of artistry of my instinct. Its higher protection manifested itself to such a high degree that I never even suspected what was growing in me – and one day all my capacities, suddenly ripe, leaped forth in their ultimate perfection. I cannot remember that I ever tried hard – no trace of struggle can be demonstrated in my life; I am the opposite of a heroic nature. “Willing” something, “striving” for something, envisaging a “purpose,” a “wish” – I know none of this from my experience. At this very moment I still look upon my future – an ample future! – as upon calm seas: there is no ripple of desire. I do not want in the least that anything should become different that it is; I myself do not want to become different.
10
I do not know any other way of associating with great tasks than play: as a sign of greatness.
To this day I still have the same affability for everyone; I even treat with special respect those who are lowliest: in all of this there is not one grain of arrogance or secret contempt. PP My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it – all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary – but love it. [Footnote to amor fati: Love of fate. It should be noted how Ecce Homo exemplifies this attitude. As long as one overlooks this, as well as the fact that Nietzsche’s life for the preceding decade, and more, had been troubled by continued ill health and excruciating physical pain, and that his books were, without exception, totally “unsuccessful,” one does not begin to understand Ecce Homo.]
Why I Write Such Good Books
No notes
The Birth of Tragedy
No notes
The Untimely Ones
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Human, All Too-Human
with Two Sequels
3
I have discovered that a large number of young men experience the same distress: one antinatual step virtually compels the second. … all to many are condemned to choose vocations too early, and then to waste away under a burden they can no longer shake off. – These people require an opiate: they forget themselves, they are rid of themselves for a moment. – What am I saying? For five or six hours!
Dawn
Thoughts About Morality as a Prejudice
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The Gay Science
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra
8
Zarathustra has mastered the great nausea over man, too: man is for him an un-form, a material, an ugly stone that needs a sculptor.
Now my hummer rages cruelly against its prison. Pieces of rock rain from the stone: what is that to me? I want to perfect it…
… Dionysian task … joy even in destroying. The imperative, “become hard!” the most fundamental certainty that all creators are hard, is the distinctive mark of a Dionysian nature.
Beyond Good and Evil
2
This book (1886) is in all essential a critique of modernity, not excluding the modern sciences, modern arts, and even modern politics.
Psychology is practiced with admitted hardness and cruelty – the book is devoid of any good-natures word.
Genealogy of Morals
No notes
Twilight of the Idols
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The Case of Wagner
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Why I Am a Destiny
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