Nietzsche: The Will to Power. Friedrich Nietzsche
Читать онлайн книгу.
2. Further Causes of Nihilism
27.
The causes of Nihilism: (1) The higher species is lacking, i.e., the species whose inexhaustible fruitfulness and power would uphold our belief in Man (think only of what is owed to Napoleon—almost all the higher hopes of this century).
(2) The inferior species ("herd," "ass," "society") is forgetting modesty, and inflates its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In this way all life is vulgarised: for inasmuch as the mass of mankind rules, it tyrannises over the exceptions, so that these lose their belief in themselves and become Nihilists.
All attempts to conceive of a new species come to nothing ("romanticism," the artist, the philosopher; against Carlyle's attempt to lend them the highest moral values).
The result is that higher types are resisted.
The downfall and insecurity of all higher types. The struggle against genius ("popular poetry," etc.). Sympathy with the lowly and the suffering as a standard for the elevation of the soul.
The philosopher is lacking, the interpreter of deeds, and not alone he who poetises them.
28.
Imperfect Nihilism—its forms: we are now surrounded by them.
All attempts made to escape Nihilism, which do not consist in transvaluing the values that have prevailed hitherto, only make the matter worse; they complicate the problem.
29.
The varieties of self-stupefaction. In one's heart of hearts, not to know, whither? Emptiness. The attempt to rise superior to it all by means of emotional intoxication: emotional intoxication in the form of music, in the form of cruelty in the tragic joy over the ruin of the noblest, and in the form of blind, gushing enthusiasm over individual men or distinct periods (in the form of hatred, etc.). The attempt to work blindly, like a scientific instrument; to keep an eye on the many small joys, like an investigator, for instance (modesty towards oneself); the mysticism of the voluptuous joy of eternal emptiness; art "for art's sake" ("le fait"), "immaculate investigation," in the form of narcotics against the disgust of oneself; any kind of incessant work, any kind of small foolish fanaticism; the medley of all means, illness as the result of general profligacy (dissipation kills pleasure).
(1) As a result, feeble will-power.
(2) Excessive pride and the humiliation of petty weakness felt as a contrast.
30.
The time is coming when we shall have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the equilibrium which enables us to live—for a long while we shall not know in what direction we are travelling. We are hurling ourselves headlong into the opposite valuations, with that degree of energy which could only have been engendered in man by an overvaluation of himself.
Now, everything is false from the root, words and nothing but words, confused, feeble, or over-strained.
(a) There is a seeking after a sort of earthly solution of the problem of life, but in the same sense as that of the final triumph of truth, love, justice (socialism: "equality of persons").
(b) There is also an attempt to hold fast to the moral ideal (with altruism, self-sacrifice, and the denial of the will, in the front rank).
(c) There is even an attempt to hold fast to a "Beyond": were it only as an antilogical x; but it is forthwith interpreted in such a way that a kind of metaphysical solace, after the old style, may be derived from it.
(d) There is an attempt to read the phenomena of life in such a way as to arrive at the divine guidance of old, with its powers of rewarding, punishing, educating, and of generally conducing to a something better in the order of things.
(e) People once more believe in good and evil; so that the victory of the good and the annihilation of the evil is regarded as a duty (this is English, and is typical of that blockhead, John Stuart Mill).
(f) The contempt felt for "naturalness," for the desires and for the ego: the attempt to regard even the highest intellectuality of art as a result of an impersonal and disinterested attitude.
(g) The Church is still allowed to meddle in all the essential occurrences and incidents in the life of the individual, with a view to consecrating it and giving it a loftier meaning: we still have the "Christian State" and the "Christian marriage."
31.
There have been more thoughtful and more destructively thoughtful4 times than ours: times like those in which Buddha appeared, for instance, in which the people themselves, after centuries of sectarian quarrels, had sunk so deeply into the abyss of philosophical dogmas, as, from time to time, European people have done in regard to the fine points of religious dogma. "Literature" and the press would be the last things to seduce one to any high opinion of the spirit of our times: the millions of Spiritists, and a Christianity with gymnastic exercises of that ghastly ugliness which is characteristic of all English inventions, throw more light on the subject.
European Pessimism is still in its infancy—a fact which argues against it: it has not yet attained to that prodigious and yearning fixity of sight to which it attained in India once upon a time, and in which nonentity is reflected; there is still too much of the "ready-made," and not enough of the "evolved" in its constitution, too much learned and poetic Pessimism; I mean that a good deal of it has been discovered, invented, and "created," but not caused.
32.
Criticism of the Pessimism which has prevailed hitherto. The want of the eudæmonological standpoint, as a last abbreviation of the question: what is the purpose of it all? The reduction of gloom.
Our Pessimism: the world has not the value which we believed it to have,—our faith itself has so increased our instinct for research that we are compelled to say this to-day. In the first place, it seems of less value: at first it is felt to be of less value,—only in this sense are we pessimists,—that is to say, with the will to acknowledge this transvaluation without reserve, and no longer, as heretofore, to deceive ourselves and chant the old old story.
It is precisely in this way that we find the pathos which urges us to seek for new values. In short: the world might have far more value than we thought—we must get behind the naïveté of our ideals, for it is possible that, in our conscious effort to give it the highest interpretation, we have not bestowed even a moderately just value upon it.
What has been deified? The valuing instinct inside the community (that which enabled it to survive).
What has been calumniated? That which has tended to separate higher men from their inferiors, the instincts which cleave gulfs and build barriers.
33.
Causes effecting the rise of Pessimism:—
(1) The most powerful instincts and those which promised most for the future have hitherto been calumniated, so that life has a curse upon it.
(2) The growing bravery and the more daring mistrust on the part of man have led him to discover the fact that these instincts cannot be cut adrift from life, and thus he turns to embrace life.
(3) Only the most mediocre, who are not conscious of this conflict, prosper; the higher species fail, and as an example of degeneration tend to dispose all hearts against them—on the other hand, there is some indignation caused by the mediocre positing themselves as the end and meaning of all things. No one can any longer reply to the question: "Why?"
(4)