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Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
PREFACE
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman—what then? Is
there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so
far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand
women—that the terrible seriousness and clumsy
importunity with which they have usually paid their
addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly
methods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never
allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of
dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien—IF, indeed,
it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it
has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground—nay more,
that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are
good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in
philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and
decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble
puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand
when it will be once and again understood WHAT has
actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and
absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have
hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of
immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in
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the form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet
ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a
deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious
generalization of very restricted, very personal, very
human—all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the
dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for
thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still
earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than
on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its
‘super- terrestrial’ pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand
style of architecture. It seems that in order to inscribe
themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting
claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth
as enormous and awe- inspiring caricatures: dogmatic
philosophy has been a caricature of this kind—for
instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platonism in
Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must
certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,
and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a
dogmatist error—namely, Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit
and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been
surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can
again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier—
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sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS
ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle
against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very
inversion of truth, and the denial of the
PERSPECTIVE—the fundamental condition—of life, to
speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them;
indeed one might ask, as a physician: ‘How did such a
malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had
the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates
after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?’
But the struggle against Plato, or—to speak plainer, and
for the ‘people’—the struggle against the ecclesiastical
oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR
CHRISITIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE
‘PEOPLE’), produced in Europe a magnificent tension of
soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with
such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this
tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been
made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic
enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty of the press
and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that
the spirit would not so easily find itself in ‘distress’! (The
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Germans invented gunpowder-all credit to them! but they
again made things square—they invented printing.) But
we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even
sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and
free, VERY free spirits—we have it still, all the distress of
spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also the
arrow, the duty, and, who knows? THE GOAL TO AIM
AT….
Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.
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CHAPTER I: PREJUDICES OF
PHILOSOPHERS
1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a
hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all
philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what
questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What
strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a
long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is
it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience,
and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at
last to ask questions ourselves? WHO is it really that puts
questions to us here? WHAT really is this ‘Will to Truth’
in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the
origin of this Will—until at last we came to an absolute
standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We
inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we
want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And
uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of
truth presented itself before us—or was it we who
presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is
the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to
be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation.
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And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the
problem had never been propounded before, as if we were
the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK
RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is
no greater risk.
2. ‘HOW COULD anything originate out of its
opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to
Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed
out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise
man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible;
whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool;
things of the highest value must have a different origin, an
origin of THEIR own—in this transitory, seductive,
illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and
cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the
lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in
the ‘Thing-in-itself— THERE must be their source, and
nowhere else!’—This mode of reasoning discloses the
typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can
be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all
their logical procedure; through this ‘belief’ of theirs, they
exert themselves for their ‘knowledge,’ for something that
is in the end solemnly christened ‘the Truth.’ The
fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN
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ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred even to
the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold
(where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they
had made a solemn vow, ‘DE OMNIBUS
DUBITANDUM.’ For it may be doubted, firstly, whether
antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular
valuations and antitheses of value upon which
metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely
superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives,
besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps
from below—‘frog perspectives,’ as it were, to borrow an
expression current among painters. In spite of all the value
which may belong to the true, the positive, and the
unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more
fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to
pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and
cupidity. It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes
the value of those good and respected things, consists
precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and
crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things—
perhaps even in being essentially identical with them.
Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such
dangerous ‘Perhapses’! For that investigation one must
await the advent of a new order of philosophers, such as
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will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those
hitherto prevalent—philosophers of the dangerous
‘Perhaps’ in every sense of the term. And to speak in all
seriousness, I see such new philosophers beginning to
appear.
3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having
read between their lines long enough, I now say to myself
that the greater part of conscious thinking must be
counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even
in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn
anew, as one learned anew about heredity and ‘innateness.’
As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the
whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is
‘being-conscious’ OPPOSED to the instinctive in any
decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious thinking of
a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and
forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and its
seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or
to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the
maintenance of a definite mode of life For example, that
the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion
is less valuable than ‘truth’ such valuations, in spite of their
regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be
only superficial valuations, special kinds of maiserie, such
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as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as
ourselves. Supposing, in effect, that man is not just the
‘measure of things.’
4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any
objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language
sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an
opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-
preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are
fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions
(to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the
most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of
logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the
purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable,
without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means
of numbers, man could not live—that the renunciation of
false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation
of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A
CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the
traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a
philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone
placed itself beyond good and evil.
5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-
distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated
discovery how innocent they are—how often and easily
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they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how
childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not
enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a
loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness
is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as
though their real opinions had been discovered and
attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely
indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who,
fairer and foolisher, talk of ‘inspiration’), whereas, in fact, a
prejudiced proposition, idea, or ‘suggestion,’ which is
generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is
defended by them with arguments sought out after the
event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be
regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their
prejudices, which they dub ‘truths,’— and VERY far from
having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself,
very far from having the good taste of the courage which
goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn
friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.
The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff
and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-
ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his ‘categorical
imperative’— makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find
no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old
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moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the
hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which
Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and
mask—in fact, the ‘love of HIS wisdom,’ to translate the
term fairly and squarely—in order thereby to strike terror
at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to
cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that Pallas
Athene:—how much of personal timidity and vulnerability
does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!
6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great
philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the
confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary
and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the
moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has
constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire
plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the
abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have
been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask
oneself: ‘What morality do they (or does he) aim at?’
Accordingly, I do not believe that an ‘impulse to
knowledge’ is the father of philosophy; but that another
