Nietzsche's Eight Principal Questions.

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1

In The Will to Power (i.e., in the Notebooks), we find the following entry. I will follow Kaufmann’s translation, but not his punctuation and italicisation (which are different from Nietzsche’s).

[size=95]The typical forms of self-formation. Or: the eight principal questions.

  1. Whether one wants to be more multifarious or simpler.
  2. Whether one wants to become happier or more indifferent to happiness and unhappiness.
  3. Whether one wants to become more contented with oneself or more exacting and inexorable?
  4. Whether one wants to become softer, more yielding, more human, or more “inhuman”.
  5. Whether one wants to become more prudent or more ruthless.
  6. Whether one wants to reach a goal or to avoid all goals (—as, e.g., the philosopher does who smells a boundary, a nook, a prison, a stupidity in every goal…).
  7. Whether one wants to become more respected or more feared? Or more despised!
  8. Whether one wants to become tyrant or seducer or shepherd or herd animal?
    [WP 909 (Jan.-Fall 1888), entire.][/size]

A friend asked me what this meant, which is the occasion for my writing this here (I will simply give him the link afterward). I will interpret this passage piece by piece, beginning with the title.

The titles

In the German it says simply “self-formations” (not “forms of self-formation”). The word is Selbst-Gestaltungen, in which one may recognise the word Gestalt, as in “Gestalt psychology”. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary even has an entry for “gestalt” by itself, without the word “psychology”:

[size=95]a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts
[http://m-w.com/dictionary/gestalt, with my emphasis.][/size]

We could thus translate Nietzsche’s title as “The typical ways in which one makes oneself so integrated” etc. This already gives a clue for understanding the first question. But the passage has a subtitle. In German it says “The eight capital questions”, though “capital” here simply means they are “at the head”, like a shepherd at the head of his flock, so “principal” is good enough: the shepherd walks in front.

1. Whether one wants to be more multifarious or simpler.

These questions are about gestalting oneself. To become more multifarious (German vielfach, lit. “with many compartments”) does not help one to become more gestalted. To become more simple (German einfach, lit. “with one compartment”) does do so: it forces one to integrate all one’s ‘compartments’ into one.

Another entry from around the same period may clarify this:

[size=95]Overall view of the future European: the most intelligent slave animals, very industrious, fundamentally very modest, inquisitive to excess, multifarious [vielfach], pampered, weak of will—a cosmopolitan chaos of affects and intelligence. How could a stronger species [of man] raise itself out of him? A species with classical taste? Classical taste: this means will to simplification [Vereinfachung], strengthening, to visible happiness, to the terrible, the courage of psychological nakedness (—simplification is a consequence of the will to strengthening; allowing happiness to become visible, also nakedness, a consequence of the will to be terrible…). To fight upward[!] out of that chaos to this form [Gestaltung!]—requires a compulsion: one must be faced with the choice of perishing or prevailing. A dominating race can grow up only out of terrible and violent beginnings. Problem: where are the barbarians of the twentieth century? Obviously, they will come into view and consolidate themselves only after tremendous socialist crises,—they will be the elements capable of the greatest severity toward themselves and able to guarantee the most enduring will…
[WP 868 (Nov. 1887-March 1888), entire.][/size]

A long passage to quote, I know, but entirely functional: it almost explains section 909. We can now see what the first question implies: Does one want to be a slave animal or a master animal? Does one have the will to weakening or to strengthening?

2. Whether one wants to become happier or more indifferent to happiness and unhappiness.

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2108990#p2108990

In the post linked to and its follow-ups, I show the difference between happiness as a goal and happiness as the side-effect of having a goal and striving toward it. Thus I wrote:

Only if one has one’s why? of life, only if one has a goal […]—only then can one be happy regardless of one’s how? of life.
[http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2109222#p2109222.]

So we could rephrase the second question as: Does one strive for happiness, or is one happy with one’s happiness being a side-effect of one’s striving (which is a striving toward something other than happiness)?

Or, as is implied further on in the post I’ve just quoted from: Does one want the happiness of weaklings, or does one want to be indifferent toward that happiness because one has the happiness of the strong? So again, it comes down to this: Does one want to be one of the weaklings, or one of the strong? Does one want to be a slave animal, or a master animal?

3. Whether one wants to become more contented with oneself or more exacting and inexorable?

To be contented with oneself is to allow oneself to become weaker:

[size=95]The happiness and self-contentment of the Lazzaroni or the “bliss” of “beautiful souls” or the consumptive love of Herrnhuteristic priests prove nothing regarding order of rank among men. As a great educator, one would have to scourge such a race of “blessed” people mercilessly into unhappiness. The danger of dwarfing, of relaxation is present at once: against Spinozistic or Epicurean happiness and against all relaxation in contemplative states. But if virtue is the means to such happiness, very well, then one has to become master over virtue, too.
[WP 911 (1885-1886), entire.][/size]

Therefore: if one wants to be a master, one must scourge oneself mercilessly out of one’s self-contentment—that is, one must be exacting and inexorable with oneself.

4. Whether one wants to become softer, more yielding, more human, or more “inhuman”.

From the structure of this question in the original German, it is especially obvious that “softer, more yielding, more human” belong together and are contrasted with “more “inhuman””—that is, there are only two possibilities, not four. If one wants to be a slave animal, one wants the former; if one wants to be a master animal, one wants the latter:

[size=95]Man is beast and superbeast [Untier und Übertier]; the higher man is inhuman and superhuman [Unmensch und Übermensch]: these belong together. With every increase of greatness and height in man, there is also an increase in depth and terribleness [cf. section 868 above!]: one ought to desire the one without the other—or rather: the more radically one desires the one, the more radically one achieves precisely the other.
[WP 1027 (Spring-Fall 1887), entire.][/size]

So “inhuman” is placed between quotation marks in question # 4 because that is only one side of the story—the story told by those who are soft, yielding, human—that is, human all too human. The question is: Does one want to become more human all too human, or more human superhuman?—

5. Whether one wants to become more prudent or more ruthless.

The word here translated as “ruthless” is rücksichtslos, literally “backsightless”, i.e., without looking back, without consideration—consideration for oneself, that much is clear from questions # 2 and 3. So the question is: does one want to become better at sparing oneself, or at not sparing oneself? Again, the former leads to weakness, the latter to strength, of course.

6. Whether one wants to reach a goal or to avoid all goals (—as, e.g., the philosopher does who smells a boundary, a nook, a prison, a stupidity in every goal…).

From the parenthesis, it is clear what Nietzsche advocates. But how can we reconcile this with what was said about goals earlier in this thread, and in the other thread?—Well, why should one avoid all goals? If that is indeed what Nietzsche advocates, his advocating it in this list of questions suggests that it leads toward strength, toward mastery—and this goal is then that for which one avoids ‘all’ goals. But this goals is not a goal that can be reached: one can always become stronger, more masterful.

7. Whether one wants to become more respected [geachtet] or more feared [gefürchtet]? Or more despised [verachtet]!

There are several words for “respect” in German, the most important among which in Nietzsche’s works are Achtung, “regard”, and Ehrfurcht, “honour-fright”. As Nietzsche here uses the word geachtet, he means the former here. The former is the respect all civilised people are expected to muster for each other, the latter is the respect one commands: unlike in the former case, one does not force oneself to feel or at least pretend to feel it, the other party forces one to feel it—arouses it, inspires it in one. As Caligula was fond of saying: “Let them hate me, as long as they fear me!”—

Hate implies a looking up to. But there is another kind of disapproval. It is to de-spise, verachten in German, i.e., to look away because the object is not deemed worthy of being looked at. Because Nietzsche mentions both Achtung and Verachtung, it seems by Achtung he does not mean that the one who shows respect only pretends to feel respect: for then Achtung and Verachtung would not necessarily be mutually exclusive. Yet by Achtung he still does not mean Ehrfurcht. Laurence Lampert contrasts the two as follows (though he does not use the word Ehrfurcht, but simply Respekt):

[size=95][T]he opening [of BGE 239] speaks of the unusual attention (Achtung) now accorded women, whereas the end speaks of a completely different respect (Respekt) accorded women in Greek times, respect based not on the modern ideal of equality but on female nature. The difference between the two attitudes focuses on the passion of fear: women have reasonably lost their fear of modern man; Greek males reasonably feared women.
[…] [W]oman’s nature forced males into Respekt for women. What inspired respect for women, “and often enough fear, is her nature, which is more ‘natural’ than man’s”—males have been subject to greater cultivation or denaturing than females. […] Man stands before woman as the civilized or weakened before the mysterious and untamed; in fearing woman he fears what he cannot fathom or subject to his control.
[Lampert, Nietzsche’s Task, pp. 239-241.][/size]

Achtung for women, then, is ‘respect’ for their being cultivated, civilised, weakened… From this perspective, ‘de-spect’ would come very close to fear. But being despised is even more desirable than being feared, because it is harder on oneself:

[size=95]Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence [Ehrfurcht] dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength.
What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.
What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To exhibit one’s folly in order to mock at one’s wisdom?
[…]
Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one’s hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.
[TSZ I, Of the Three Metamorphoses.][/size]

8. Whether one wants to become tyrant or seducer or shepherd or herd animal?

In the final question, there are not just two possibilities, as in questions # 1-6, nor even three as in question # 7, but a whopping four possibilities. What do they have to do with one another?—They differ in the way they relate to the herd. The fourth possibility, “to become herd animal”, means to become just a member of the herd. The third possibility, “to become shepherd”, means to become the guide of the herd. But what do the first two possibilities mean? The following aphorism may throw light upon the matter:

[size=95]You run ahead?—Are you doing it as a shepherd? or as an exception? A third case would be the fugitive… First question of conscience.
[Nietzsche, TI, Arrows, 37.][/size]

This is the first of four ‘questions of conscience’ Nietzsche poses near the end of the chapter in question. Could it be that the three possibilities mentioned here are the first three mentioned in WP 909, question # 8? The possibility of being a herd animal is not mentioned because the herd animal never runs ahead, never walks in front. (Note by the way that “herdlike” and “slavelike” are more or less synonymous for Nietzsche.) Let us suppose that the answer is “yes, they are the same possibilities”. It is then obvious that the shepherd corresponds to the shepherd… But what about the other two possibilities?

In TSZ, Zarathustra is in a sense a fugitive. Thus he is told:

[size=95]“Leave this town, O Zarathustra, […] there are too many here who hate thee. The good and just hate thee, and call thee their enemy and despiser; the believers in the orthodox belief hate thee, and call thee a danger to the multitude. It was thy good fortune to be laughed at: and verily thou spakest like a buffoon. It was thy good fortune to associate with the dead dog; by so humiliating thyself thou hast saved thy life to-day. Depart, however, from this town,—or tomorrow I shall jump over thee, a living man over a dead one.”
[TSZ, Zarathustra’s Prologue, 8.][/size]

And having thus become ‘free as a bird’, Zarathustra changes his aspiration: from one aspiring to be the herd’s new shepherd, he now turns into the herd’s seducer: that is, into one aspiring to se-duce (lead away) some herd members from the herd!

[size=95]A light hath dawned upon me. Not to the people is Zarathustra to speak, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be the herd’s herdsman and hound!
To allure many from the herd—for that purpose have I come. The people and the herd must be angry with me: a robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen.
Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the good and just. Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the believers in the orthodox belief.
[ibid., 9.][/size]

From this, I am pretty sure Nietzsche’s ‘fugitive’ and his ‘seducer’ are one and the same. Is his ‘ex-ception’ (Aus-nahme) then his ‘tyrant’ (Tyrann)? If so, how?

As a classical philologist by trade, Nietzsche must have been well aware of the Greek meaning of turannos (Latinisation tyrannus). Originally, turannos simply meant “king”, but a king who was a stranger, as in Oidipous Turannos, “King Oedipus”. Regardless of whether this helps us understand what Nietzsche means by “exception” in the Maxim and Arrow quoted above, I’m pretty sure this explains what he means by “tyrant” in WP 909. It means someone who has never belonged to the herd, has not arisen from the herd like the shepherd, but has come from outside the herd in order to dominate it. The shepherd does not dominate it, but only guides it: he is the first servant of the herd, as all herd members are servants of the herd (in WP 879, Nietzsche says even the shepherd belongs to the herd; cf. sections 358 and 902). Zarathustra came back down from the mountains (TSZ Prologue) driven by his ‘craving to dominate’ (Herrschsucht):

[size=95]Passion for power [Herrschsucht]: but who would call it passion, when the height longeth to stoop for power! Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in such longing and descending!
That the lonesome height may not forever remain lonesome and self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds of the heights to the plains:—
Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such longing! “Bestowing virtue”—thus did Zarathustra once name the unnamable.
[TSZ III, Of the Three Evil Things, 2.][/size]

The shepherd is like a Patriarch, the tyrant like a Caesar, a dictator. But Nietzsche/Zarathustra does not wish to dictate the herd directly; he wants to seduce exceptional people to follow him of their own free will, “because they want to follow themselves” (TSZ Prologue, 9); he wants them to freely accept his dictations:

[size=95]Order of rank: He who determines values and directs the will of millennia by giving direction to the highest natures is the highest man.
[WP 999 (1884), entire.][/size]

2

The titles

The word “typical” may refer to the two types Nietzsche has in mind: the herd or slave animal and the master or leader (Führer) animal (not to be mistaken with the guide animal, the shepherd; that is merely a sublime herd or slave animal).

7. Whether one wants to become more respected or more feared? Or more despised!

To be feared can well be harder on one than to be despised, of course: for instance, as I quoted before:

[size=95]“Leave this town, O Zarathustra, […] there are too many here who hate thee. The good and just hate thee, and call thee their enemy and despiser; the believers in the orthodox belief hate thee, and call thee a danger to the multitude. It was thy good fortune to be laughed at: and verily thou spakest like a buffoon. It was thy good fortune to associate with the dead dog; by so humiliating thyself thou hast saved thy life to-day. Depart, however, from this town,—or tomorrow I shall jump over thee, a living man over a dead one.”
[TSZ, Zarathustra’s Prologue, 8.][/size]

So to become more feared and to become more despised are the two choices the one who seeks to become more masterful has: he should choose that which makes him stronger (though it should not get him killed).

8. Whether one wants to become tyrant or seducer or shepherd or herd animal?

These are really two times two possibilities. The former two are the two possibilities the one who seeks to become more masterful has; the latter two are the possibilities the one who seeks to become more slavelike has.

3

Whilst I’m not sure I have the right to either agree or disagree with you on anything you’ve said here, I am still reading through your discussion and I have no knowledge of German, I’m just posting to say that this is easily one of the most interesting posts on Nietzsche I’ve seen on this forum.

4

Thank you, Phoebus. Well, I may be wrong about what I said about turannos, for example; from what I just read on various websites, it was rather a person whose way to the throne did not go through the usual channels. But even this is a later development; originally it just seems to have referred to any single ruler. And I just read the following:

[size=95]For Aristotle, a turannos is a ruler who governs for his own sake, while a basileus [“king”] governs for the benefit of his people.
[Felix Budelmann, The language of Sophocles.][/size]

For Nietzsche, I think the latter may apply to the ‘shepherd’, but not the former to the tyrant—at least not to the artist-tyrants mentioned in WP 960! The philosophical artist-tyrant governs for the sake of the Overman: he wants to make his people “stronger, more evil, and more profound—also more beautiful” (BGE 295; cf. TSZ, In the Happy Isles). But if he cannot disenthrone the ‘shepherd(s)’, he must become a seducer, like Zarathustra.—

5

It may be of some passing interest that the proto-Greek root TUR (corresponding to the “germanic” rune UR or URUZ) in “turannos” is directly related to the animal variously called TUR, URUS or AUROCHS (itself likely a phonetic corruption of “ur-ox”), now thought extinct. The animal was a gigantic wild ox weighing over 1 metric ton that inhabited mainly forests, and possibly had a nocturnal, solitary lifestyle. It was described by Julius Caesar as “a little below the elephant in size”, of the general appearance of a bull but of far greater strength, agility and ferocity. They were naturally violent and extremely imposing. Domestication was (apparently) impossible. Originating millions of years ago, in India, this animal was something of a “brand” for many Aryan-held lands, similar to how we hold the bear in association with the Russians, etc., and still appears to this day in heraldic form throughout the land. From the cave paintings at Lascaux to the famous Ishtar Gate, leading to inner Babylon where it is prominently depicted, the Tur-Ox has the connotation of mighty, ancient, timeless power for the laymen and an obvious esoteric significance for the builders of the Race.

It is entirely unsurprising in this context that the original notion of the “tyrant” would have the connotation of an “outsider”, or one coming up through unusual means to total lordship over the land. As with many of these ancient Indo-Aryan words and concepts, the attendant negative moral judgement is a much later ideological superimposition (that is, the WIld Beast itself was not thought of as “evil” by peoples, but rather admired for sublime, unbendable ferocity and held sacred).

-WL

6

An interesting etymology, WL, though I cannot find corroboration for it anywhere. The Online Etymology Dictionary does suggest that turannos be cognate with the Etruscan Turan, which it calls a “surname of Venus”; and though the goddess is meant there, the planet Venus is commonly held to be the ruler of the Zodiac sign Taurus. But can we not discern a connection between the ‘tyrant’ and the ‘seducer’ here? In the only instance I can remember of Nietzsche mentioning the name Venus, he says:

[size=95]The princes[!] of Europe should consider carefully whether they can do without our support. We immoralists—we are today the only power that needs no allies in order to conquer: thus we are by far the strongest of the strong. We do not even need to tell lies: what other power can dispense with that? A powerful seduction fights on our behalf, the most powerful perhaps that there has ever been—the seduction of truth… Truth? Who has forced this word upon me? But I repudiate it; but I disdain this proud word: no, we do not even need this; we shall conquer and come to power even without truth. The spell that fights on our behalf, the eye of Venus that charms and blinds even our opponents, is the magic of the extreme, the seduction that everything extreme exercises: we immoralists—we are the most extreme.
[WP 749 (1887-88), entire.][/size]

This is a very interesting passage (crossed out by Nietzsche in the notebooks, though). I have to interpret it. On the fly: immoralists like Nietzsche are the strongest of the strong because they do not need allies in order to conquer. We should think of a solitary bull here. And indeed, solitary bulls have, in mythology, been great seducers or tempters (I will treat the difference next): e.g., Zeus’ metamorphosis as a white bull, conquering Europa (I see a parallel with Nietzsche here!); the seduction of Pasiphaë (Europa’s doublet, by the way) by a white bull sent by Poseidon (a full brother of Zeus), whose union produced the Minotaur; etc. There is a lot in these stories that I cannot do justice ‘on the fly’.

Now as for the difference between seducing and tempting (respectively verführen, “to lead astray”, and versuchen, “to—metaphorically—request to go astray”). According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, the difference between “to seduce” and “to tempt” is that “to seduce” “implies a leading astray by persuasion or false promises”, whereas “to tempt” “implies the presenting of an attraction so strong that it overcomes the restraints of conscience or better judgment”. But in the Dictionary of the Dutch Language (Dutch being my native language), the verb verzoeken is defined in this sense as “to test with evil intent; to attempt to cause (so.) to do something evil or wrong by persuasion or false promises; to (attempt to) seduce; to lead into temptation; to contest [i.e., to attempt to convince otherwise; cf. the “persuasion” mentioned before].”

My conclusion is that there is no sharp distinction between seducing and tempting (in German and Dutch, at least). The Biblical examples par excellence are Eve and the Serpent, respectively, but I think the seduction mentioned by Nietzsche above is rather like the Serpent’s temptation of Eve than like Eve’s seduction of Adam. For one thing, the Serpent is commonly identified with Satan, Satan is commonly identified with Lucifer, and Lucifer is a name for the planet Venus in its manifestation as the ‘morning star’. I could go into my identification of the Serpent with Prometheus based on chapter 9 of The Birth of Tragedy, but will not do so in this post. More relevant at this point seems to me Nietzsche’s reference to “truth”. Already in the Preface to BGE, he had suggested that truth be a woman. But a woman can only be seduced by a strong yet subtle male. The dogmatists that tried to conquer her may have been strong, but they were not subtle. In the above passage, I think Nietzsche implies that he did conquer truth. But the subtlety with which he had conquered her there forces him to not make any absolute demands on her. Immoralists like him can, or pretend they can, do without her. Compare:

[size=95]It is ironic that women find men attractive that are relatively indifferent to them specifically and find men unappealing that are infatuated with them specifically (The “nice guy” they want to remain friends with).
[Constantinos Apostolakos, The Feminization of Man(kind).][/size]

Women like Truth run after immoralists like Nietzsche because the latter do not run after women (cf. TSZ, Of Involuntary Bliss). But in what sense are such immoralists “the most extreme” (die Äussersten, “the outermost ones”)? Methinks Nietzsche’s undogmatic truthfulness is the perfect example of their ‘extremeness’. For it was his extreme methodicality by virtue of which he arrived at the—undogmatic—truth:

[size=95]Suppose nothing else were “given” as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other “reality” besides the reality of our drives […]; is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the question whether this “given” would not be sufficient for also understanding on the basis of this kind of thing the so-called mechanistic (or “material”) world? […] In the end not only is it permitted to make this experiment; the conscience of method demands it. Not to assume several kinds of causality until the experiment of making do with a single one has been pushed to its utmost [äusserste] limit (to the point of nonsense, if I may say so)—that is a moral of method which one may not shirk today—it follows “from its definition,” as a mathematician would say. […] The world viewed from inside, the world defined and determined according to its “intelligible character”—it would be “will to power” and nothing else.—
[BGE 36.][/size]

And indeed, Nietzsche says elsewhere:

[size=95]It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.
[WP 466 (1888), entire.][/size]

We can now explain this as follows. Science here means scientia, actual knowledge. But Nietzsche does not claim actual knowledge, but actual methodicality. His scientific method makes no claim on knowledge, even as Logic makes no claim on Truth. (His) philosophy is completely rational; it does not depend on Revelation. From this rationality springs the natural right of philosopher-kings.—

7

The questions were all black and white with no color in between…

8

That’s because there are, at bottom, only two human types, according to Nietzsche (the herd type and the leader type).

9

I read an interesting quote last night:

[size=95]The greater the urge towards unity, the more one can infer weakness; the greater the urge towards variety, difference, inner disintegration, the more power there is
[Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Werke VII 3, 36 [21].][/size]

Having the will to strengthening (and thereby the will to simplification) implies weakness, of course (which is always relative). So we can rephrase question # 1 as follows:

1. Whether one wants to make one’s urge towards unity greater or one’s urge toward variety, difference, inner disintegration.

The two possibilities mentioned correspond respectively with being more multifarious and with being simpler.—

[size=95]The feeling of intoxication, in fact corresponding to an increase in strength; strongest in the mating season: new organs, new accomplishments, colors, forms… “becoming more beautiful” is a (necessary) consequence of enhanced strength. Becoming more beautiful as the expression of a victorious will, of increased co-ordination, of a harmonizing of all the strong desires, of an infallibly perpendicular stress. Logical and geometrical simplification is a consequence of enhancement of strength: conversely the apprehension of such a simplification again enhances the feeling of strength… High point of the development: the grand style.
Ugliness signifies the decadence of a type, contradiction and lack of co-ordination among the inner desires—signifies a decline in organizing strength, in “will”, to speak psychologically…
[WP 800 (1888).][/size]

In this quote, I have made bold the phrases that correspond to the first possibility, and underlined those that correspond to the second. And from it, we may infer that it is false that “one can always become stronger, more masterful”, as I said in my OP. There is a high point in the development. This is the grand style. And I think this fits in perfectly with my studies of the masculine and the feminine, and of beauty and ugliness.

10

There is a principal as old a Greek philosophy at work here…I think it is the prinicpal of the excluded middle… If it is not this, then it is that…If it is not day, it is night…We do not want the spectrum because we cannot grasp it… We want the extremes…

11

First off, I think your notion of ‘color’ is mistaken: it’s rather a case of shades of grey. Also, you seem not to have considered the possibility of a most exact criterion for counting a person among the herd or among the leaders. This could be an either/or question. It’s a good question, though: what makes one a leader? What makes one a herd animal?

12

[“Sauwelios”]

First off, I think your notion of ‘color’ is mistaken: it’s rather a case of shades of grey. Also, you seem not to have considered the possibility of a most exact criterion for counting a person among the herd or among the leaders. This could be an either/or question. It’s a good question, though: what makes one a leader? What makes one a herd animal?
[/quote]
It is hard to imagine anyone unwilling to judge humans gregarious…That is clearly the human instinct: To bond… He may be right that there is a morality to such people, but it is not contrived… It is a natural morality we practice… It is the behavior of the supermen that must be rationalized because without rationalization it is clearly immoral, and destructive of society…Such behavior on the part of the powerful has as long a history as humanity… There were always some monkey killers among us even when we were monkeys, and there was an easy transition to canniblism…We needed the protean, and they competed with us for food… The excuse works for both; if you can conceive of your victim as an object, some kind of monkey, then to kill him or exploit him is already justified…I think that is the object of Nietzsche, to justify the violence and injustice that the rich inflict upon the poor so he could vicariously enjoy his own suffering…There is no question that Nietzsche was a moralist if an immoralist can be considered a moralist…It does not take much morality to sing to a tune that most of the world is sobbing with…What he should have realized is that no morality is rational…Morality is as close as we have to an instinct in action…It is the price we pay for life, for community, and for hope…No one does it because it is easy…The same is true of philosophy…If it was easy, Nietzsche’s mamma would have done it…

13

Re. the will to multifariousness vs. the will to simplification, as well as doing without ‘truth’:

[size=95]That commanding something which the people calls spirit' wants to be master within itself and around itself and to feel itself master: [b]out of multiplicity it has the will to simplicity, a will which binds together and tames, which is imperious and domineering[/b]. In this its needs and capacities are the same as those which physiologists posit for everything that lives, grows and multiplies. The power of the spirit to appropriate what is foreign to it is revealed in a strong inclination [b]to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the complex, to overlook or repel what is wholly contradictory[/b]: just as it arbitrarily emphasizes, extracts and falsifies to suit itself certain traits and lines in what is foreign to it, in every piece of external world’. Its intention in all this is the incorporation of new experiences', the arrangement of new things within old divisions ‑ growth, that is to say; more precisely, the feeling of growth, the feeling of increased power. This same will is served by an apparently antithetical drive of the spirit, a sudden decision for ignorance, for arbitrary shutting‑out, a closing of the windows, an inner denial of this or that thing, a refusal to let it approach, a kind of defensive posture against much that can be known, a contentment with the dark, with the closed horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: all this being necessary according to the degree of its power to appropriate, its digestive power’, to speak in a metaphor ‑ and indeed the spirit' is more like a stomach than anything else. It is here that there also belongs the occasional will of the spirit to let itself be deceived, perhaps with a mischievous notion that such and such is not the case, that it is only being allowed to pass for the case, a joy in uncertainty and ambiguity, an exultant enjoyment of the capricious narrowness and secrecy of a nook‑and‑corner, of the all too close, of the foreground, of the exaggerated, diminished, displaced, beautified, an enjoyment of the capriciousness of all these expressions of power. Finally there also belongs here that not altogether innocent readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits and to dissemble before them, that continual pressing and pushing of a creative, formative, changeable force: in this the spirit enjoys the multiplicity and cunning of its masks, it enjoys too the sense of being safe that this brings ‑ for it is precisely through its protean arts that it is best concealed and protected) [b]This will to appearance, to simplification, to the mask, to the cloak, in short to the superficial ‑ for every surface is a cloak ‑ is counteracted by that sublime inclination in the man of knowledge which takes a profound, many‑sided and thorough view of things and will take such a view[/b]: as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste which every brave thinker will recognize in himself, provided he has hardened and sharpened for long enough his own view of himself, as he should have, and is accustomed to stern discipline and stern language. He will say there is something cruel in the inclination of my spirit’ ‑ let the amiable and virtuous try to talk him out of that) [b]In fact, it would be nicer if, instead of with cruelty, we were perhaps credited with an extravagant honesty' ‑ we free, very free spirits ‑ and perhaps that will actually one day be our posthumous fame? In the meantime ‑ for it will be a long time before that happens ‑ we ourselves are likely to be least inclined to dress up in moralistic verbal tinsel and valences of this sort: all our labour hitherto has spoiled us for this taste and its buoyant luxuriousness. They are beautiful, glittering, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for the sake of knowledge, heroism of the truthful ‑ there is something about them that makes one's pride swell. But we hermits and marmots long ago became convinced that this worthy verbal pomp too belongs among the ancient false finery, lumber and gold‑dust of unconscious human vanity[/b], and that under such flattering colours and varnish too the terrible basic text homo natura must again be discerned. For to translate man back into nature; to master the many vain and fanciful interpretations and secondary meanings which have been hitherto scribbled and daubed over that eternal basic text homo natura; to confront man henceforth with man in the way in which, hardened by the discipline of science, man today confronts the rest of nature, with dauntless Oedipus eyes and stopped‑up Odysseus ears, deaf to the siren songs of old metaphysical bird‑catchers who have all too long been piping to him you are more! you are higher! you are of a different origin!’ ‑ that may be a strange and extravagant task but it is a task ‑ who would deny that? Why did we choose it, this extravagant task? Or, to ask the question differently: `why knowledge at all?'‑ Everyone will ask us about that. And we, thus pressed, we who have asked ourselves the same question a hundred times, we have found and can find no better answer…
[BGE 230.][/size]

In Fent’s thread on Nietzsche’s early metaphysics, I think I have made matters (even) more complicated. I have done so (and tend to do so) not out of cruelty, however, but out of an—admittedly severe—will to truth. This will to truth, however, is a form of the will to power, which is “the basic will of the spirit” (BGE 230). In fact, I think I disagree with Nietzsche that “we have found and can find no better answer”, than “cruelty”, at least; I think the best and only right answer is: “because knowledge is power”… And even if it is not knowledge we pursue but methodicality of knowledge, our goal is still power, or the feeling of power, we Nietzschean knights!—Why do I seek to comprehend, for instance, Nietzsche’s early metaphysics?—Because such comprehension is a kind of mastery—and my will to mastery seeks to master all the material, from the notebooks as well as from the books.

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[size=95]“God” as the moment of culmination: existence an eternal deifying and un-deifying. But in that not a high point of value, but only a high point of power.
[…]
Retreat from the high-point in Becoming (the highest spiritualization of power on the most slavish ground) to be represented as a consequence of this highest force, which, turning against itself when it no longer has anything left to organize, expends its force on disorganization…
[WP 712 (1887).][/size]

15

Re. tyranny and seduction: in astrology, the Western sign of Taurus (the Bull) corresponds to the Eastern sign of the Snake.

16

Typo: WP 1027 should read: “one ought not to desire the one without the other”.

::

“For a better understanding of ‘our virtue’ [i.e., probity] it is helpful to contrast it with the most powerful antagonist, the morality preached up by the English utilitarians which accepts indeed egoism as the basis of morality but contends that egoism rightly understood leads to the espousal of the general welfare. That utilitarianism is digusting, boring and naive. While it recognizes the fundamental character of egoism, it does not realize the fact that egoism is will to power and hence includes cruelty which, as cruelty directed toward oneself, is effective in intellectual probity, in ‘the intellectual conscience.’” (Leo Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.)