No More Learning

407.
Philosophers are prejudiced against appearance,
change, pain, death, the things of the body, the
senses, fate, bondage, and all that which has no
purpose.
In the first place, they believe in: absolute
knowledge, (2) in knowledge for its own sake,
(3) in virtue and happiness as necessarily related,
(4) in the recognisability of men's acts. They are
led by instinctive determinations of values, in
which former cultures are reflected (more danger-
ous cultures too).
408.
What have philosophers lacked? (1) A sense
of history, (2) a knowledge of physiology, (3) a


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328
THE WILL TO POWER.
goal in the future. —The ability to criticise without
irony or moral condemnation.
409.
Philosophers have had (1) from times im-
memorial a wonderful capacity for the contradictio
in adjecto, (2) they have always trusted concepts
as unconditionally as they have mistrusted the
senses : it never seems to have occurred to them
that notions and words are our inheritance of past
ages in which thinking was neither very clear nor
very exact.
What seems to dawn upon philosophers last of
all: that they must no longer allow themselves to
be presented with concepts already conceived, nor
must they merely purify and polish up those con-
cepts; but they must first make them, create them,
themselves, and then present them and get people
to accept them. Up to the present, people have
trusted their concepts generally, as if they had
been a wonderful dowry from some kind of
wonderland: but they constitute the inheritance
of our most remote, most foolish, and most intelli-
gent forefathers. This piety towards that which
already exists in us is perhaps related to the moral
element in science. What we needed above all is
absolute scepticism towards all traditional concepts
(like that which a certain philosopher may already
have possessed—and he was Plato, of course : for
he taught the reverse).
S


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
329
410.
Profoundly mistrustful towards the dogmas of
the theory of knowledge, I liked to look now out
of this window, now out of that, though I took
good care not to become finally fixed anywhere,
indeed I, should have thought it dangerous to
have done so-though finally: is it within the
range of probabilities for an instrument to criticise
its own fitness ? What I noticed more particu-
larly was, that no scientific scepticism or dog-
matism has ever arisen quite free from all arrières
pensées—that it has only a secondary value as
soon as the motive lying immediately behind it is
discovered.
Fundamental aspect: Kant's, Hegel's, Schopen-
hauer's, the sceptical and epochistical, the histori-
fying and the pessimistic attitudes all have a
moral origin. I have found no one who has
dared to criticise the moral valuations, and I soon
turned my back upon the meagre attempts that
have been made to describe the evolution of these
feelings (by English and German Darwinians).
How can Spinoza's position, his denial and
repudiation of the moral values, be explained ?
(It was the result of his Theodicy ! )
411.
Morality regarded as the highest form of
protection. Our world is either the work and
expression (the modus) of God, in which case it
must be in the highest degree perfect (Leibnitz's


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330
THE WILL TO POWER.
conclusion . . . ),—and no one doubted that he
knew what perfection must be like,—and then all
evil can only be apparent (Spinoza is more radical,
he says this of good and evil), or it must be a part
of God's high purpose (a consequence of a particu-
larly great mark of favour on God's part, who thus
allows man to choose between good and evil : the
privilege of being no automaton; "freedom," with
the ever-present danger of making a mistake and
of choosing wrongly. . . . See Simplicius, for
instance, in the commentary to Epictetus).
Or our world is imperfect; evil and guilt are
real, determined, and are absolutely inherent to
its being; in that case it cannot be the real
world: consequently knowledge can only be a
way of denying the world, for the latter is error
which may be recognised as such. This is
Schopenhauer's opinion, based upon Kantian
first principles. Pascal was still more desperate :
he thought that even knowledge must be corrupt
and false—that revelation is a necessity if only
in order to recognise that the world should be
denied.
412.
Owing to our habit of believing in uncondi-
tional authorities, we have grown to feel a
profound need for them : indeed, this feeling is
so strong that, even in an age of criticism such
as Kant's was, it showed itself to be superior to
the need for criticism, and, in a certain sense, was
able to subject the whole work of critical acumen,
and to convert it to its own use. It proved its


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
331
superiority once more in the generation which
followed, and which, owing to its historical
instincts, naturally felt itself drawn to a relative
view of all authority, when it converted even the
Hegelian philosophy of evolution (history re-
christened and called philosophy) to its own use,
and represented history as being the self-revela-
tion and self-surpassing of moral ideas. Since
Plato, philosophy has lain under the dominion of
morality. Even in Plato's predecessors, moral
interpretations play a most important rôle (Anaxi-
mander declares that all things are made to perish
as a punishment for their departure from pure
being; Heraclitus thinks that the regularity of
phenomena is a proof of the morally correct
character of evolution in general).
413.
The progress of philosophy has been hindered
most seriously hitherto through the influence of
moral arrières-pensées.
414.
9
In all ages, “ fine feelings" have been regarded
as arguments, “heaving breasts” have been the
bellows of godliness, convictions have been the
"criteria” of truth, and the need of opposition
has been the note of interrogation affixed to
wisdom. This falseness and fraud permeates the
whole history of philosophy. But for a few
respected sceptics, no instinct for intellectual
uprightness is to be found anywhere. Finally,


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332
THE WILL TO POWER,
Kant guilelessly sought to make this thinker's
corruption scientific by means of his concept,
practical reason. " He expressly invented a
reason which, in certain cases, would allow one
not to bother about reason—that is to say, in cases
where the heart's desire, morality, or “duty” are
the motive power.
415
Hegel : his popular side, the doctrine of war
and of great men. Right is on the side of the
victorious : he (the victorious man) stands for the
progress of mankind.
His is an attempt at
proving the dominion of morality by means of
history.
Kant: a kingdom of moral values withdrawn
from us, invisible, real.
Hegel : a demonstrable process of evolution,
the actualisation of the kingdom of morality.
We shall not allow ourselves to be deceived
either in Kant's or Hegel's way :-We no longer
believe, as they did, in morality, and therefore have
no philosophies to found with the view of justify-
ing morality. Criticism and history have no
charm for us in this respect: what is their charm,
then ?
416.
The importance of German philosophy (Hegel),
the thinking out of a kind of pantheism which
would not reckon evil, error, and suffering as
arguments against godliness. This grand initia-
tive was misused by the powers that were (State,


## p. 333 (#357) ############################################

CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
333
etc. ) to sanction the rights of the people that
happened to be paramount.
Schopenhauer appears as a stubborn opponent
of this idea ; he is a moral man who, in order to
keep in the right concerning his moral valuation,
finally becomes a denier of the world. Ultimately
he becomes a "mystic. "
I myself have sought an æsthetic justification
of the ugliness in this world. I regarded the
desire for beauty and for the persistence of certain
forms as a temporary preservative and recupera-
tive measure: what seemed to me to be funda-
mentally associated with pain, however, was the
eternal lust of creating and the eternal compulsion
to destroy.
We call things ugly when we look at them with
the desire of attributing some sense, some new
sense, to what has become senseless: it is the
accumulated power of the creator which compels
him to regard what has existed hitherto as no
longer acceptable, botched, worthy of being sup-
pressed-ugly!
417.
My first solution of the problem: Dionysian
wisdom. The joy in the destruction of the most
noble thing, and at the sight of its gradual undoing,
regarded as the joy over what is coming and what
lies in the future, which triumphs over actual
things, however good they may be. Dionysian :
temporary identification with the principle of life
(voluptuousness of the martyr included).
My innovations. The Development of Pessim-


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334
THE WILL TO POWER.
ism: intellectual pessimism; moral criticism, the
dissolution of the last comfort. Knowledge, a
sign of decay, veils by means of an illusion all
strong action; culture isolates, is unfair and
therefore strong.
(1) My fight against decay and the increas-
ing weakness of personality. I sought a new
centrum.
(2) The impossibility of this endeavour is
recognised.
(3) I therefore travelled farther along the road
of dissolution and along it I found new sources
of strength for individuals. We must be destroyers !
-I perceived that the state of dissolution is one in
which individual beings are able to arrive at a kind
of perfection not possible hitherto, it is an image and
isolated example of life in general. To the para-
lysing feeling of general dissolution and imperfec-
tion, I opposed the Eternal Recurrence,
418.
People naturally seek the picture of life in that
philosophy which makes them most cheerful-
that is to say, in that philosophy which gives the
highest sense of freedom to their strongest instinct.
This is probably the case with me.
419.
German philosophy, as a whole, -Leibnitz,
Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, to mention the
greatest, - is the most out-and-out form of
.


## p. 335 (#359) ############################################

CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
335
"
66
romanticism and home-sickness that has ever yet
existed : it is a yearning for the best that has
ever been known on earth. One is at home no-
where ; that which is ultimately yearned after is a
place where one can somehow feel at home; be-
cause there alone one would like to be at home, and
that place is the Greek world !
But it is precisely
in that direction that all bridges are broken down
-save, of course, the rainbow of concepts! And
the latter lead everywhere, to all the homes and
“ fatherlands” that ever existed for Greek souls !
Certainly, one must be very light and thin in
order to cross these bridges ! But what happiness
lies even in this desire for spirituality, almost for
ghostliness! With it, how far one is from the
press and bustle" and the mechanical boorish-
ness of the natural sciences, how far from the
vuigar din of “modern ideas”! One wants to get
back to the Greeks via the Fathers of the Church,
from North to South, from formulæ to forms; the
passage out of antiquity-Christianity—is still a
source of joy as a means of access to antiquity,
as a portion of the old world itself, as a glistening
mosaic of ancient concepts and ancient valuations.
Arabesques, scroll-work, rococo of scholastic
abstractions—always better, that is to say, finer
and more slender, than the peasant and plebeian
reality of Northern Europe, and still a protest
on the part of higher intellectuality against the
peasant war and insurrection of the mob which
have become master of the intellectual taste of
Northern Europe, and which had its leader in a
man as great and unintellectual as Luther :--in


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336
THE WILL TO POWER.
this respect German philosophy belongs to the
Counter-Reformation, it might even be looked
upon as related to the Renaissance, or at least to
the will to Renaissance, the will to get ahead with
the discovery of antiquity, with the excavation of
ancient philosophy, and above all of pre-Socratic
philosophy—the most thoroughly dilapidated of
all Greek temples ! Possibly, in a few hundred
years, people will be of the opinion that all
German philosophy derived its dignity from this
fact, that step by step it attempted to reclaim the
soil of antiquity, and that therefore all demands
for "originality” must appear both petty and
foolish when compared with Germany's higher
claim to having refastened the bonds which
seemed for ever rent-the bonds which bound us to
the Greeks, the highest type of “men "ever evolved
hitherto. To-day we are once more approach-
ing all the fundamental principles of the cosmogony
which the Greek mind in Anaximander, Hera-
clitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, and
Anaxagoras, was responsible for. Day by day
we are growing more Greek; at first, as is only
natural, the change remains confined to concepts
and valuations, and we hover around like Grecis-
ing spirits : but it is to be hoped that some day
our body will also be involved ! Here lies (and
has always lain) my hope for the German nation.
420.
I do not wish to convert anybody to philosophy:
it is both necessary and perhaps desirable that the


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
337
philosopher should be a rare plant. Nothing is
more repugnant to me than the scholarly praise
of philosophy which is to be found in Seneca and
Cicero. Philosophy has not much in common
with virtue. I trust I may be allowed to say that
even the scientific man is a fundamentally different
person from the philosopher. What I most desire
is, that the genuine notion "philosopher" should
not completely perish in Germany.
There are so
many incomplete creatures in Germany already
who would fain conceal their ineptitude beneath
such noble names.
421.
I must set up the highest ideal of a philosopher.
Learning is not everything! The scholar is the
sheep in the kingdom of learning; he studies be-
cause he is told to do so, and because others have
done so before him.
422.
The superstition concerning philosophers: They
are confounded with men of science. As if the
value of things were inherent in them and required
only to be held on to tightly! To what extent
are their researches carried on under the influence
of values which already prevail (their hatred of
appearance of the body, etc. )? Schopenhauer
concerning morality (scorn of Utilitarianism).
Ultimately the confusion
goes
far that
Darwinism is regarded as philosophy, and thus at
the present day power has gone over to the men
of science. Even Frenchmen like Taine prosecute
Y
SO
VOL. I.


## p. 338 (#362) ############################################

338
THE WILL TO POWER.
research, or mean to prosecute research, without
being already in possession of a standard of
4 valuation. Prostration before “facts” of a kind
of cult. As a matter of fact, they destroy the
existing valuations.
The explanation of this misunderstanding. The
man who is able to command is a rare phenomenon;
he misinterprets himself. What one wants to do,
above all, is to disclaim all authority and to
attribute it to circumstances. In Germany the
critic's estimations belong to the history of
awakening manhood. Lessing, etc. (Napoleon
concerning Goethe). As a matter of fact, the
movement is again made retrograde owing to
German romanticism: and the fame of German
philosophy relies upon. it as if it dissipated the
danger of scepticism and could demonstrate faith.
Both tendencies culminate in Hegel : at bottom,
what he did was to generalise the fact of German
criticism and the fact of German romanticism,-a
kind of dialectical fatalism, but to the honour of
intellectuality, with the actual submission of the
philosopher to reality. The critic prepares the way :
that is all 1
With Schopenhauer the philosopher's mission
dawns; it is felt that the object is to determine
values; still under the dominion of eudemonism.
The ideal of Pessimism.
423
Theory and practice. This is a pernicious dis-
tinction, as if there were an instinct of knowledge,
1
!


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
339
which, without inquiring into the utility or harm-
fulness of a thing, blindly charged at the truth;
and then that, apart from this instinct, there were
the whole world of practical interests.
In contradiction of this, I try to show what
instincts are active behind all these pure theorists,
—and how the latter, as a whole, under the
dominion of their instincts, fatally make for some-
thing which to their minds is "truth," to their
minds and only to their minds. The struggle
between systems, together with the struggle
between epistemological scruples, is one which
involves very special instincts (forms of vitality, of
decline, of classes, of races, etc. ).
The so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced
to the lust of appropriation and of conquest: in
obedience to this lust the senses, memory, and
the instincts, etc. , were developed. The quickest
possible reduction of the phenomena, economy,
the accumulation of spoil from the world of know-
ledge (i. e. that portion of the world which has
been appropriated and made manageable). .
Morality is therefore such a curious science,
because it is in the highest degree practical : the
purely scientific position, scientific uprightness, is
thus immediately abandoned, as soon as morality
calls for replies to its questions. Morality says:
I require certain answers—reasons, arguments;
scruples may come afterwards, or they may not
come at all.
“ How must one act ? " If one considers that
one is dealing with a supremely evolved type-a
type which has been “dealt with" for countless.


## p. 340 (#364) ############################################

340
THE WILL TO POWER.
thousands of years, and in which everything has
become instinct, expediency, automatism, fatality,
the urgency of this moral question seems rather
funny.
“How must one act? " Morality has always
been a subject of misunderstanding: as a matter
of fact, a certain species, which was constituted to
act in a certain way, wished to justify itself by
making its norm paramount.
“How must one act ? ” this is not a cause, but
an effect. Morality follows, the ideal comes
at the end.
On the other hand, the appearance of moral
scruples (or in other words, the coming to conscious-
ness of the values which guide action) betray a
certain morbidness; strong ages and people do
not ponder over their rights, nor over the principles
of action, over instinct or over reason. Conscious-
ness is a sign that the real morality—that is to say,
the certainty of instinct which leads to a definite
course of action-is going to the dogs. . . . Every
time a new world of consciousness is created, the
moralists are signs of a lesion, of impoverishment
and of disorganisation. Those who are deeply
instinctive fear bandying words over duties : among
them are found pyrrhonic opponents of dialectics
and of knowableness in general. . . . A virtue is
refuted with a “for. " . . .
Thesis : The appearance of moralists belongs
to periods when morality is declining.
Thesis : The moralist is a dissipator of moral
instincts, however much he may appear to be their
restorer.


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
341
Thesis : That which really prompts the action
of a moralist is not a moral instinct, but the
instincts of decadence, translated into the forms of
morality (he regards the growing uncertainty of
the instincts as corruption).
Thesis : The instincts of decadence which, thanks
to moralists, wish to become master of the in-
stinctive morality of stronger races and ages,
are :
(1) The instincts of the weak and of the botched;
(2) The instincts of the exceptions, of the
anchorites, of the unhinged, of the abortions of
quality or of the reverse;
(3) The instincts of the habitually suffering, who
require a noble interpretation of their condition,
and who therefore require to be as poor physi-
ologists as possible.
424.
The humbug of the scientific spirit. -One should
not affect the spirit of science, when the time to
be scientific is not yet at hand; but even the
genuine investigator has to abandon vanity, and
has to affect a certain kind of method which is
not yet seasonable. Neither should we falsify
things and thoughts, which we have arrived at
differently, by means of a false arrangement of
deduction and dialectics. It is thus that Kant in
his "morality” falsifies his inner tendency to
"
psychology; a more modern example of the same
thing is Herbert Spencer's Ethics.
A man should
neither conceal nor misrepresent the facts con-
cerning the way in which he conceived his


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342
THE WILL TO POWER.
thoughts. The deepest and most inexhaustible
books will certainly always have something of the
aphoristic and impetuous character of Pascal's
Pensées. The motive forces and valuations have
lain long below the surface; that which comes
uppermost is their effect.
I guard against all the humbug of a false
scientific spirit :
(1) In respect of the manner of demonstration,
if it does not correspond to the genesis of the
thoughts;
(2) In respect of the demands for methods which,
at a given period in science, may be quite
impossible;
(3) In respect of the demand for objectivity, for
cold impersonal treatment, where, as in the case
of all valuations, we describe ourselves and our
intimate experiences in a couple of words. There
are ludicrous forms of vanity, as, for instance,
Sainte-Beuve's. He actually worried himself all
his life because he had shown some warmth or
passion either “pro” or “con," and he would fain
have lied that fact out of his life.
425.
" Objectivity” in the philosopher : moral in-
difference in regard to one's self, blindness in regard
to either favourable or fatal circumstances. Un-
scrupulousness in the use of dangerous means;
perversity and complexity of character considered
as an advantage and exploited.
My profound indifference to myself: I refuse


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
343
to derive any advantage from my knowledge, nor
do I wish to escape any disadvantages which it
may entail. — I include among these disadvantages
that which is called the perversion of character;
this prospect is beside the point: I use my char-
acter, but I try neither to understand it nor to
change it—the personal calculation of virtue has
not entered my head once. It strikes me that one
closes the doors of knowledge as soon as one
becomes interested in one's own personal case- -or
even in the “ Salvation of one's soul”! . . . One
should not take one's morality too seriously, nor
should one forfeit a modest right to the opposite
of morality. .
A sort of heritage of morality is perhaps pre-
supposed here: one feels that one can be lavish
with it and fing a great deal of it out of the
window without materially reducing one's means.
One is never tempted to admire “ beautiful souls,”
one always knows one's self to be their superior.
The monsters of virtue should be met with inner
scorn ; déniaiser la vertu-Oh, the joy of it!
One should revolve round one's self, have no
desire to be" better” or “anything else" at all than
one is.
One should be too interested to omit
throwing the tentacles or meshes of every mor-
ality out to things.
>
426.
Concerning the psychology of philosophers.
They should be psychologists—this was possible
only from the nineteenth century onwards—and
no longer little Jack Horners, who see three or


## p. 344 (#368) ############################################

344
THE WILL TO POWER.
four feet in front of them, and are almost satisfied
to burrow inside themselves. We psychologists of
the future are not very intent on self-contempla-
tion: we regard it almost as a sign of degeneration
when an instrument endeavours" to know itself” : *
we are instruments of knowledge and we would
fain possess all the precision and ingenuousness of
an instrument-consequently we may not analyse
or “ know” ourselves. The first sign of a great
psychologist's self-preservative instinct: he never
goes in search of himself, he has no eye, no interest,
no inquisitiveness where he himself is concerned.
. . The great egoism of our dominating will
insists on our completely shutting our eyes to
ourselves, and on our appearing “impersonal,
“disinterested”! -Oh to what a ridiculous degree
we are the reverse of this !
We are no Pascals, we are not particularly in-
terested in the “ Salvation of the soul,” in our own
happiness, and in our own virtue. —We have neither
enough time nor enough curiosity to be so con-
cerned with ourselves. Regarded more deeply, the
case is again different, we thoroughly mistrust all
men who thus contemplate their own navels : be-
cause introspection seems to us a degenerate form
of the psychologist's genius, as a note of interroga-
tion affixed to the psychologist's instinct : just as
a painter's eye is degenerate which is actuated by
the will to see for the sake of seeing.
>
* TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. —Goethe invariably inveighed
against the “yvôOl geautóv” of the Socratic school ; he was
of the opinion that an animal which tries to see its inner self
must be sick.


## p. 345 (#369) ############################################

CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
345
2. A CRITICISM OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
427.
.
.
»
.
The apparition of Greek philosophers since the
time of Socrates is a symptom of decadence; the
anti-Hellenic instincts become paramount.
The “Sophist” is still quite Hellenic—as are
also Anaxagoras, Democritus, and the great
Ionians; but only as transitional forms. The
polis loses its faith in the unity of its culture, in
its rights of dominion over every other polis.
Cultures, that is to say,“ the gods," are exchanged,
and thus the belief in the exclusive prerogative
of the deus autochthonus is lost. Good and Evil of
whatever origin get mixed: the boundaries separ-
ating good from evil gradually vanish. This
is the “ Sophist. ”
On the other hand, the "philosopher" is the
reactionary: he insists upon the old virtues. He
sees the reason of decay in the decay of institu-
tions: he therefore wishes to revive old institutions ;
-he sees decay in the decline of authority: he
therefore endeavours to find new authorities (he
travels abroad, explores foreign literature and
exotic religions. . . . );—he will reinstate the ideal
polis, after the concept "polis" has become super-
annuated (just as the Jews kept themselves to-
gether as a "people" after they had fallen into
slavery). They become interested in all tyrants :
their desire is to re-establish virtue with force
majeure.


## p. 346 (#370) ############################################

346
THE WILL TO POWER.
Gradually everything genuinely Hellenic is held
responsible for the state of decay (and Plato is just
as ungrateful to Pericles, Homer, tragedy, and
rhetoric as the prophets are to David and Saul).
The downfall of Greece is conceived as an objection
to the fundamental principles of Hellenic culture :
the profound error of philosophers. —Conclusion : the
Greek world perishes. The cause thereof: Homer,
mythology, ancient morality, etc.
The anti-Hellenic development of philosophers'
valuations :-the Egyptian influence (“Life after
death" made into law. . . . );the Semitic influence
(the “ dignity of the sage,” the “Sheik');—the
Pythagorean influence, the subterranean cults,
Silence, means of terrorisation consisting of appeals
to a “ Beyond,” mathematics : the religious valua-
tion consisting of a sort of intimacy with a cosmic
entity ;-the sacerdotal, ascetic, and transcendental
influences ;-the dialectical influence, I am of
“
opinion that even Plato already betrays revolting
and pedantic meticulousness in his concepts !
Decline of good intellectual taste: the hateful
noisiness of every kind of direct dialectics seems
no longer to be felt.
The two decadent tendencies and extremes run
side by side: (a) the luxuriant and more charming
kind of decadence which shows a love of pomp and
art, and (6) the gloomy kind, with its religious and
moral pathos, its stoical self-hardening tendency,
its Platonic denial of the senses, and its preparation
of the soil for the coming of Christianity.


## p. 347 (#371) ############################################

CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY,
347
428.
To what extent psychologists have been cor-
rupted by the moral idiosyncrasy ! -Not one of
the ancient philosophers had the courage to
advance the theory of the non-free will (that is
to say, the theory that denies morality);-not
one had the courage to identify the typical
feature of happiness, of every kind of happiness
("pleasure"), with the will to power : for the
pleasure of power was considered immoral;—not
one had the courage to regard virtue as a result
of immorality (as a result of a will to power) in
the service of a species (or of a race, or of a polis);
for the will to power was considered immoral.
In the whole of moral evolution, there is no
sign of truth: all the conceptual elements which
come into play are fictions; all the psychological
tenets are false ; all the forms of logic employed
in this department of prevarication are sophisms.
The chief feature of all moral philosophers is their
total lack of intellectual cleanliness and self-control :
they regard “fine feelings” as arguments: their
heaving breasts seem to them the bellows of
godliness. . . . Moral philosophy is the most
suspicious period in the history of the human
intellect.
The first great example: in the name of
morality and under its patronage, a great wrong
was committed, which as a matter of fact was
in every respect an act of decadence. Sufficient
stress cannot be laid upon this fact, that the
great Greek philosophers not only represented
.


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348
THE WILL TO POWER.
»
the decadence of every kind of Greek ability, but
also made it contagious. . . . This “virtue" made
wholly abstract was the highest form of seduction;
to make oneself abstract means to turn one's back
on the world.
The moment is a very remarkable one: the
Sophists are within sight of the first criticism of
morality, the first knowledge of morality :—they
classify the majority of moral valuations (in view
of their dependence upon local conditions) together;
- they lead one to understand that every form of
morality is capable of being upheld dialectically:
that is to say, they guessed that all the funda-
mental principles of a morality must be sophistical
-a proposition which was afterwards proved in
the grandest possible style by the ancient philoso-
phers from Plato onwards (up to Kant) ;—they
postulate the primary truth that there is no such
thing as a "moral per se," a "good per se," and
that it is madness to talk of “truth” in this
respect.
Wherever was intellectual uprightness to be found
in those days?
The Greek culture of the Sophists had grown
out of all the Greek instincts; it belongs to the
culture of the age of Pericles as necessarily as
Plato does not: it has its predecessors in Hera-
clitus, Democritus, and in the scientific types of
the old philosophy; it finds expression in the
elevated culture of Thucydides, for instance, And
—it has ultimately shown itself to be right: every
step in the science of epistemology and morality
has confirmed the attitude of the Sophists. . . . Our


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
349
.
modern attitude of mind is, to a great extent,
Heraclitean, Democritean, and Protagorean .
to say that it is Protagorean is even sufficient :
because Protagoras was in himself a synthesis of
the two men Heraclitus and Democritus.
(Plato : a great Cagliostro, let us think of how
Epicurus judged him; how Timon, Pyrrho's friend,
judged him Is Plato's integrity by any chance
beyond question ? . . . But we at least know
what he wished to have taught as absolute truth
-namely, things which were to him not even
relative truths: the separate and immortal life of
souls. ")
429.
.
The Sophists are nothing more nor less than
realists: they elevate all the values and practices
which are common property to the rank of values
—they have the courage, peculiar to all strong
intellects, which consists in knowing their im-
morality.
Is it to be supposed that these small Greek
independent republics, so filled with rage and envy
that they would fain have devoured each other,
were led by principles of humanity and honesty?
Is Thucydides by any chance reproached with
the words he puts into the mouths of the Athenian
ambassadors when they were treating with the
Melii anent the question of destruction or sub-
mission ? Only the most perfect Tartuffes could
have been able to speak of virtue in the midst of
that dreadful strain—or if not Tartuffes, at least
detached philosophers, anchorites, exiles, and fleers


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350
THE WILL TO POWER.
.
from reality. . . . All of them, people who denied
things in order to be able to exist.
The Sophists were Greeks: when Socrates and
Plato adopted the cause of virtue and justice, they
were Jews or I know not what. Grote's tactics
in the defence of the Sophists are false: he would
like to raise them to the rank of men of honour
and moralisers-but it was their honour not to
indulge in any humbug with grand words and
virtues,
430.
The great reasonableness underlying all moral
education lay in the fact that it always attempted
to attain to the certainty of an instinct: so that
neither good intentions nor good means, as such,
first required to enter consciousness. Just as the
soldier learns his exercises, so should man learn
how to act in life, In truth this unconsciousness
belongs to every kind of perfection: even the
mathematician carries out his calculations un-
consciously. .
What, then, does Socrates' reaction mean, which
recommended dialectics as the way to virtue, and
which was amused when morality was unable to
justify itself logically ? But this is precisely what
proves its superiority--without unconsciousness it
is worth nothing!
In reality it means the dissolution of Greek
instincts, when demonstrability is posited as the
first condition of personal excellence in virtue.
All these great "men of virtue" and of words are
themselves types of dissolution.


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
351
»
In practice, it means that moral judgments have
been torn from the conditions among which they
grew and in which alone they had some sense, from
their Greek and Græco-political soil, in order to
be denaturalised under the cover of being sub-
limated. The great concepts "good" and "just"
are divorced from the first principles of which they
form a part, and, as “ideas” become free, degenerate
into subjects for discussion. A certain truth is
sought behind them; they are regarded as entities
or as symbols of entities: a world is invented where
they are “at home," and from which they are
supposed to hail.
In short: the scandal reaches its apotheosis in
Plato. . . . And then it was necessary to invent
the abstract perfect man also good, just, wise,
and a dialectician to boot-in short, the scarecrow
of the ancient philosopher: a plant without any
soil whatsoever; a human race devoid of all
definite ruling instincts; a virtue which“ justifies
itself with reasons. The perfectly absurd “in-
dividual” per se! the highest form of Artifici-
ality. . . .
Briefly, the denaturalisation of moral values
resulted in the creation of a degenerate type of
man—"the good man," "the happy man," "the
“
wise man. "-Socrates represents a moment of the
most profound perversity in the history of values.
.
"
431.
Socrates. This veering round of Greek taste
in favour of dialectics is a great question. What


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352
THE WILL TO POWER,
1
1
3
really happened then ? Socrates, the roturier
who was responsible for it, was thus able to
triumph over a more noble taste, the taste of the
noble :—the mob gets the upper hand along with
dialectics. Previous to Socrates dialectic manners
were repudiated in good society; they were re-
garded as indecent; the youths were warned
against them. What was the purpose of this
display of reasons? Why demonstrate? Against
others one could use authority. One commanded,
and that sufficed. Among friends, inter pares,
there was tradition—also a form of authority:
and last but not least, one understood each other,
There was no room found for dialectics. Besides,
all such modes of presenting reasons were dis-
trusted. All honest things do not carry their
reasons in their hands in such fashion. It is
indecent to show all the five fingers at the same
time. That which can be “demonstrated” is
little worth. The instinct of every party-speaker
tells him that dialectics excites mistrust and
carries little conviction. Nothing is more easily
wiped away than the effect of a dialectician. It can
a
only be a means of self-defence. One must be in an
extremity ; it is necessary to have to extort one's
rights; otherwise one makes no use of dialectics.
That is why the Jews were dialecticians, Reynard
the Fox was a dialectician, and so was Socrates,
As a dialectician a person has a merciless instru-
ment in his hand: he can play the tyrant with
it; he compromises when he conquers. The
dialectician leaves it to his opponent to demon-
strate that he is not an idiot; he is made furious
1


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CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY.
353
O
and helpless, while the dialectician himself remains
calm and still possessed of his triumphant reason-
ing powers—he paralyses his opponent's intellect.
—The dialectician's irony is a form of mob-
revenge: the ferocity of the oppressed lies in the
cold knife-cuts of the syllogism. .
In Plato, as in all men of excessive sensuality
and wild fancies, the charm of concepts was so
great, that he involuntarily honoured and deified
the concept as a form of ideal. Dialectical intori-
cation: as the consciousness of being able to
exercise control over one's self by means of it-
as an instrument of the Will to Power.
432.
a
The problem of Socrates. The two antitheses :
.
the tragic and the Socratic spirits — measured
according to the law of Life.
To what extent is the Socratic spirit a
decadent phenomenon ? to what extent are
robust health and power still revealed by the
whole attitude of the scientific man, his dialectics,
his ability, and his severity? (the health of the
plebeian; whose malice, esprit frondeur, whose
astuteness, whose rascally depths, are held in
check by his cleverness; the whole type is “ugly").
Uglification : self-derision, dialectical dryness,
intelligence in the form of a tyrant against the
" tyrant” (instinct). Everything in Socrates is
exaggeration, eccentricity, caricature; he is
buffoon with the blood of Voltaire in his veins,
z
a
VOL. I.


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354
THE WILL TO POWER.
He discovers a new form of agon; he is the first
fencing-master in the superior classes of Athens;
he stands for nothing else than the highest form of
cleverness: he calls it “virtue" (he regarded it
as a means of salvation; he did not choose to be
clever, cleverness was de rigueur); the proper
thing is to control one's self in suchwise that one
enters into a struggle not with passions but with
reasons as one's weapons (Spinoza's stratagem
-the unravelment of the errors of passion) ;—it is
desirable to discover how every one may be caught
once he is goaded into a passion, and to know
how illogically passion proceeds; self-mockery is
practised in order to injure the very roots of the
feelings of resentment.
It is my wish to understand which idiosyncratic
states form a part of the Socratic problem : its
association of reason, virtue, and happiness. With
this absurd doctrine of the identity of these things
it succeeded in charming the world : ancient philo-
sophy could not rid itself of this doctrine.
Absolute lack of objective interest: hatred of
science: the idiosyncrasy of considering one's self
a problem. Acoustic hallucinations in Socrates :
.
morbid element. When the intellect is rich and
independent, it most strongly resists preoccupying
itself with morality. How is it that Socrates is
a moral-maniac? —Every “practical” philosophy
"
immediately steps into the foreground in times of
distress. When morality and religion become the
chief interests of a community, they are signs of a
state of distress
»
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