ISBN: 9798839624801

My rating: 96/100

See Book Notes for other books I have read. If you like my notes, go buy it!

One of the last works before he had a psychotic break, this is a condensed synopsis of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Walter Kaufmann was perhaps the foremost English speaking expert on Nietzsche’s philosophy, and he recommended this book as one of the top five books to read. I agree with his assessment, and consider this an excellent and short way to get a lot of Nietzsche quickly.

Key Concepts and Quotes:

• “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.”
• “There is such a things as a hatred of lies and dissimulation, which is the outcome of a delicate sense of humour; there is also the self-same hatred but as the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is forbidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie…”
• “They were but rungs in my ladder, on them I made my ascent: – to that end I had to go beyond them. But they imagined that I wanted to lay myself to rest upon them.”
• “The value of life cannot be estimated.” Nietzsche here is not necessarily saying that life has no value, but rather that our measure of it’s value is rooted in ourselves – not in God or some other outside entity.
• “The most general principle lying at the root of every religion and morality, is this: “Do this and that and avoid this and that – and thou will be happy. Otherwise -.” Every morality and every religion is this Imperative – I call it the great original sin of reason, –immortal unreason. In my mouth this principle is converted into its opposite.”
• “We invented the concept “purpose”; in reality purpose is altogether lacking.”
• Three objects for which we need educators. People must learn to see; they must learn to think, and they must learn to speak and to write.
• “Man imagines the world itself to be overflowing with beauty, – he forgets that he is the cause of it all. He alone has endowed it with beauty.”
• “Great men, like great ages, are explosive material, in which a stupendous amount of power is accumulated: the first conditions of their existence are always historical and physiological; they are the outcome of the fact that for long ages energy has been collected, hoarded up, saved up and preserved for their use, and that no explosion has taken place. When, the tensions in the bulk has become sufficiently excessive, the most fortuitous stimulus suffices in order to call “genius,” “great deeds,” and momentous fate into the world.”
• “Never make unequal things equal.” Nietzsche uses the French Revolution as an example of what happens when we attempt to make everything equal.

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I distrust all systematisers, and avoid them. The will to a system, shows a lack of honesty.

There is such a things as a hatred of lies and dissimulation, which is the outcome of a delicate sense of humour; there is also the self-same hatred but as the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is forbidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie…

… A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

Thou runnest ahead? – Dost thou do so as a shepherd or as an exception? A third alternative would be the fugitive.

Art thou genuine or art thou only an actor? Art thou a representative or the thing represented, itself? Finally, art thou perhaps simply a copy of an actor?

Art thou one who looks on, or one who puts his own shoulder to the wheel?

They were but rungs in my ladder, on them I made my ascent: – to that end I had to go beyond them. But they imagined that I wanted to lay myself to rest upon them.

Chapter: The Problem of Socrates

… the value of life cannot be estimated.

Chapter: “Reason” in Philosophy

No notes

Chapter: How the “True World” Ultimately Became a Fable: The History of an Error

No notes. Though, here Nietzsche tells the poetic story of the title of his book: the history of how the world have moved through virtue and it’s attempts to reach heaven, and ultimately abolishes heaven is left in the bright noon day sun.

Chapter: Morality as the Enemy of Nature

Formerly, owing to the stupidity inherent in passion, men waged war against passion itself: men pledged themselves to annihilate it, – all ancient moral-mongers were unanimous on this point, “il faut tuer les passions.” (we must kill the passions). The most famous formula for this stands in the New Testament, in that Sermon on the Mount, where, let it be said incidentally, things are by no means regarded from a height. It is said there, for instance, with an application to sexuality: “if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out”: fortunately no Christian acts in obedience to this precept. To annihilate the passions and desires, simply on account of their stupidity.

The Church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds: its practice, its “remedy,” is castration. It never inquires “how can a desire be spiritualised, beautified, deified?” … To attack the passions at their roots, means attacking life itself at its source: the method of the Church is hostile to life.

A man is productive only in so far as he is rich in contrasted instincts; he can remain young only on condition that his soul does not begin to take things easy and yearn for peace. #opponentprocessing

Life itself urges us to determine value: life itself values through us when we determine values.

Chapter: The Four Great Errors

My note: I would also call these #cognitivebiases

(1) The error of the confusion of cause and effect.

The most general principle lying at the root of every religion and morality, is this: “Do this and that and avoid this and that – and thou will be happy. Otherwise -.” Every morality and every religion is this Imperative – I call it the great original sin of reason, –immortal unreason. In my mouth this principle is converted into its opposite.

The Church and morality say: “A race, a people perish through vice and luxury.” My reinstated reason says: when a people are going to the dogs, when they are degenerating physiologically, vice and luxury are bound to result.

(2) The error of false causality.

(3) The error of imaginary causes.

To trace something unfamiliar back to something familiar, is at once a relief, a comfort and a satisfaction, while it also produces a feeling of power. The unfamiliar involves danger, anxiety and care, – the fundamental instinct is to get rid of these painful circumstances. First principle: any explanation is better than none at all. (my note: N is making the point that this first principle is ultimately shortsighted)

Not only do we try to find a certain kind of explanation as the cause, but those kinds of explanations are selected and preferred which dissipate most rapidly the sensation of strangeness, novelty and unfamiliarity, – in fact the most ordinary explanations. And the result is that a certain manner of postulating causes tends to predominate ever more and more, becomes concentrated into a system, and finally reigns supreme, to the complete exclusion of all other causes and explanations. the banker thinks immediately of business, the Christian of “sin,” and the girl of her love affair.

My note: Since it’s impossible for the girl to think like a businessman, and the businessman like a girl, perhaps a meta skill to acquire is the acquisition of a broad range of skills, a broader range of experiences, to include those experiences which you find repulsive that others in fact enjoy. Why do they enjoy them? What is it that you’re missing? An incredible social power: to understand the motivations of the other and empathize.

Morality and religion are completely and utterly parts of the psychology of error: in every particular case cause and effect are confounded; as truth is confounded with the effect of that which is believed to be true; or a certain state of consciousness is confounded with the chain of causes which brought it about.

(4) The error of Free-Will

The doctrine of the will was invented principally for the purpose of punishment with the intention of tracing guilt.

What then, alone, can our teaching be? – That no one gives man his qualities, neither God, society, his parents, his ancestors, nor himself.

No one is responsible for the fact that he exists at all, that he is constituted as he is, and that he happens to be in certain circumstances and in a particular environment.

This is not the result of an individual intention, of a will, of an aim, there is no attempt at attaining to any “ideal man,” or “ideal happiness” or “ideal morality” with him, – it is absurd to wish him to be careering towards some sort of purpose. We invented the concept “purpose”; in reality purpose is altogether lacking. One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole, – there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, and condemn our existence, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, and condemning the whole. But there is nothing outside the whole! The fact that no one shall any longer be made responsible, that the nature of existence may not be traced to a causa prima, that the world is an entity neither as a sensorium nor as a spirit – this alone is the great deliverance, – thus alone is the innocence of Becoming restored … The concept “God” has been the greatest objection to existence hitherto … We deny God, we deny responsibility in God: thus alone do we save the world. –

My note: Relating error 3 to error 4, I think our invention of free will was to somehow correct the supposed “causes” of suffering in our lives. The murderer must be eliminated because he is the “cause” of suffering of others, when perhaps the truth is that his single mother was a drunk and he grew up malnourished and his brain never fully developed (or one of a thousand possible combinations of true causes that are difficult to ascertain). N is right when he says we latch on to the first plausible cause because it relieves our conscience and closes the feedback loop we use to make sense of the world. The problem is that, all too often, the first explanation is incorrect and we never see the remainder of the feedback loop to correct our thinking. we put the murderer in prison and never think about him again.

The “Improvers” of Mankind

There are no such thing as moral facts.

One must already know what [morality] is all about in order to turn it to any use.

Let me give you one example, quite provisionally. In all ages there have been people who wished to “improve” mankind: this above all is what was called morality.

To call the taming of an animal “improving” it, sounds to our ears almost like a joke. … It is certainly weakened, it is made less dangerous, and by means of the depressing influence of fear, pain, wounds, and hunger, it is converted into a sick animal. And the same holds good of the tamed man whom the priest has “improved”.

A leading principle: in order to create morality a man must have the absolute will to immorality.

All means which have been used heretofore with the object of making man moral, were through and through immoral.

Chapter: Things Germans Lack

It costs a good deal to attain to a position of power; for power stultifies.

The superior kind of man does not like “callings,” precisely because he knows himself to be called. He has time, he takes time, he cannot possibly think of becoming “finished,” – in the matter of higher culture, a man of thirty years is a beginner, a child.

My note:  I think he also is referring to “careers”.

Three objects for which we need educators. People must learn to see; they must learn to think, and they must learn to speak and to write. To learn to see – to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgement, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. Its essential feature is precisely not to wish to see, to be able to postpone one’s decision. … A man thus trained will as a learner have become generally slow, suspicious, and refractory.

Chapter: Skirmishes in a War with the Age

In this chapter Nietzsche offers us scathing reviews of the most prominent thinkers in history: Seneca, Rousseau, Schiller, Dante, Kant, Victor Hugo, Liszt, George Sand, Michelet, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Goncourt, Offenbach, Zola, Renan, Sainte-Beuve, Thomas à Kempis, George Eliot, Charles Darwin, Schopenhauer, Plato,

From an artistic standpoint, nature is no model. It exaggerates, distorts, and leaves gaps. Nature is the accident. To study “from nature” seems to me a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism – this lying in the dust before trivial facts is unworthy of a thorough artist. To see what is – is the function of another order of intellects, the anti-artistic, the matter-of-fact. One must know who one is.

To yearn for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, but rather the reverse. If a man have a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.

At bottom, Carlyle is an English atheist who makes it a point of honor not to be one.

Species do not evolve towards perfection: the weak always prevail over the strong – simply because they are the majority, and because they are also the more crafty. In order to acquire intellect, one must be in need of it.

The most intellectual men, provided they are also the most courageous, experience the most excruciating tragedies: but on that very account they honour life, because it confronts them with its most formidable antagonism.

Man imagines the world itself to be overflowing with beauty, – he forgets that he is the cause of it all. He alone has endowed it with beauty.

L’art pour l’Art: If art is deprived of the purpose of preaching morality and of improving mankind, it does not by any means follow that art is absolutely pointless, purposeless, senseless, in short l’art pour l’art …

My note: I have yet to digest the meaning of this.

My note: Blank canvas is a possibility, an option. One can live an entire lifetime without painting anything on the canvas. That is a life wasted, it is bad art.

Yet another problem of diet. – The means with which Julius Caesar preserved himself against sickness and headaches: heavy marches, the simplest mode of living, uninterrupted sojourns in the open air, continual hardships, – generally speaking these are the self-preservative and self-defensive measures against the extreme vulnerability of those subtle machines working at the highest pressure, which are called geniuses.

The human unit, the “individual,” as the people and the philosopher have always understood him, is certainly an error: he is nothing in himself, no atom, no “link in the chain,” no mere heritage from the past, – he represents the whole direct line of mankind up to his own life … If he represents declining development, decay, chronic degenerations, sickness (-illnesses are on the whole already the outcome of decline, and not the cause thereof), he is of little worth, and the purest equity would have him take away as little as possible from those who are lucky strokes of nature. He is then only a parasite upon them.

The Christian and the Anarchist. – When the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the decaying strata of society, raises his voice in spendid indignation for “right,” “justice,” ” equal rights,” he is only groaning under the burden of his ignorance, which cannot understand why he actually suffers, – what his poverty consists of – the poverty of life. An instinct of causality is active in him: someone must be responsible for his being so ill at ease. … To bewail one’s lot is always despicable: it is always the outcome of weakness. Whether one ascribes one’s afflictions to others or to one’s self, it is all the same. The socialist does the former, the Christian, for instance, does the latter. That which is common to both attitudes, or rather that which is equally ignoble in them both, is the fact that somebody must be to blame if one suffers.

Great men, like great ages, are explosive material, in which a stupendous amount of power is accumulated: the first conditions of their existence are always historical and physiological; they are the outcome of the fact that for long ages energy has been collected, hoarded up, saved up and preserved for their use, and that no explosion has taken place. When, the tensions in the bulk has become sufficiently excessive, the most fortuitous stimulus suffices in order to call “genius,” “great deeds,” and momentous fate into the world.

il est ingidne des grands coeurs de repandre le trouble qu’ils ressentent. – It is unworthy of the great hearts to spread the trouble they feel.

The first rule of all: – nobody must “let himself go,” not even when he is alone. – Good things are exceedingly costly.

The mere discipline of feelings and thoughts is little better than nil … the body must be persuaded first.

The right place is the body, demeanour, diet, physiology – the rest follows as the night the day.

Rousseauesque morality – so called “truths” of the [French] Revolution … The doctrine of equality! There is no more deadly poison than this; for it seems to proceed from the very lips of justice, whereas in reality it draws the curtain down on all justice. … “Never make unequal things equal.” … The Revolution as a drama has misled even the most noble minds.

My note: This section N criticized Rousseau and the morality that he taught the French right before the French Revolution. In classic N style he alternates between positive statements and criticism of negative statements made by his opponents, so it’s hard to follow. In summary, I think he is basically saying that the doctrine of making all things and people equal is a bad kind of morality. It sounds nice, but N calls it poison. For this reason many people have been mislead to believe that equality is good. N’s argument is the opposite: “Never make unequal things equal.”

50
I took this section and pulled out all the adjectives that N uses to describe:
Goethe:
sentimental
anti-historic
idealistic
unreal
revolutionary
far from liberating himself from life, he plunged right into it
took as much as he could on his own shoulders
aspired to totality
he created himself
strong
highly cultured
skillful in all bodily accomplishments
able to keep himself in check
had reverence for himself
fully enjoyed naturalness
tolerant
knows how to turn to his own profit that which would ruin the mediocre nature (Lincoln, Curie, Mandela, Jobs, Churchill, etc.)

Chapter: Things I Owe to the Ancients

The saying of Yea to life, including even its most strange and most terrible problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibleness, in the sacrifice of its highest types – this is what I call Dionysian. … Not in order to escape from terror and pity, not to purify one’s self of a dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence – but to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming itself – that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. … I again take my stand upon the soil from out of which my will and my capacity spring – I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, – I, the prophet of eternal recurrence.