Watered down Nietzsche

This is from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Anti-Christ (Published 1895). Nietzsche wrote in German. So the following quotation is from H.L. Mencken’s 1920 English translation. I’m presuming that Mencken did not add to, or alter, the text in any way.

Okay, so there’s what Nietzsche said about the law of natural selection in section 7 of his “Anti-Christ”.

Now here is the same chapter and verse (Anti-Christ 7) from “The Portable Nietzsche”, edited by Walter Kaufmann:

Now, Kaufmann’s “Portable Nietzsche” is an edited for length version. That is, it’s shortened down a bit. Like when they take a 3 hour long movie and shorten it to 2 hours. So it’s understandable that some sections are ommitted.

However, there is quite a difference between editing and changing the meaning. There is a big difference between taking the phrase natural selection and changing it to selection. It would be like changing the phrase racial superiority to race. Big difference between those two phrases.

Since Nietzsche is sort of like a cult figure with adherents that may water down or change what he actually said, sort of like defenders of the Pope, I’m of the impression that’s probably what Kaufmann did when he edited the Anti-Christ.

No. Nietzsche historically had qualms with Darwinism.

Then again, I schooled you on this topic once before and you didn’t listen, so I don’t expect you to now.

But that’s quite alright, tunis. I certainly understand how you could feel it prudent to favor the interpretation of Mencken, a journalist who was in his early twenties when he translated Nietzsche’s work and had a proto-libertarian agenda to push, than Kauffmann, who was a noted scholar of German literature. You have a great deal of intellectual integrity, my friend. I applaud you.

What?

Seems to me that Nietzsche accepted Darwinism as a basic alternative to creationism. That is all. I don’t think he sought a philosophical value in such a biological theory- his evaluation of Darwinism had no philosophical element until he attempted an ethical philosophy. I’m saying that Darwinism is nothing but a science…it is not a philosophy.

Nietzsche first denied all metaphysics. Then he put meaning back into the dry scientific Darwinism by investing an ethical theory- he replaced spiritualism with a “power” philosophy, something that was anti-platonic and therefore anti-metaphysical. It was immanent theory, a “process” theory. This allowed him to endorse the non-teleological evolutionary theory and put a plot to it; give it a teleology. Wasn’t the Eternal Recurrence an alternative to the “existentially meaningless universe”? Sure it was. It was to say “hey, at least there is the chance of all this happening again”. Fritz saved us from meaninglessness. He found a way to accept even the rudest of fates: to only have the same thing occur over and over again. I would rather just die and that be the end of it. But nooooo. I gotta live the same life over and over again eternally.

The “will to power” is not only the driving force behind evolution, but also the driving force behind powers that could also not be considered Darwinistic…simply because they are detrimental to species survival.

Yes to Darwin where “the strongest survive”. No to Darwin when even that has no ethical significance.

Nietzsche absolutely denied teleology. So, no.

Look at his statement about the equivalence of virtue and vice - one who loses sight hears better, for instance. The Will to Power finds a way to level itself.

Actually, I don’t know anything about Mencken other than he translated Nietzsche’s “Anti-Christ”. Here’s what I posted:

So, are you saying that Mencken did not translate the text correctly? Are you saying that he added the word natural selection in Anti-Christ 7? That’s my point. I’m not favoring anything. I simply copied Anti-Christ 7 word for word, as I did on the other thread you cite below. So, does it read - “Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction” - or doesn’t it? Did Mencken translate the German to English correctly or didn’t he? As I stated above, I presumed he did. But now you’ve aroused my curiousity!! I don’t have the German text, and I neither read nor speak German. So tell me, did Nietzsche say “law of natural selection” in Anti-Christ 7, or didn’t he?

What exactly is it you schooled me in on that thread you cite, Dionysus?? I’ve long since learned how to use the “F” word.

The best translation would hold the middle ground between the two you provide:

“Christianity is called the religion of pity…Pity crosses the whole law of evolution, which is the law of selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction.”

Entwicklung may mean both “development” and “evolution”; but see the etymologies of these two words. Actually, Nietzsche means both. He means evolution, but including the (lost?) sense of the development toward something better (“better” in the sense beyond good and evil (as the comparative of “good” as opposed to “bad”, not to “evil”)): compare section 4.

Nietzsche does not say “natural selection”, but simply “selection”. However, he certainly means natural selection, as opposed to the antinatural crossing of the law of this selection. This law is thwarted when this crossing is successful. But Nietzsche writes “cross”, meaning pity only attempts to thwart this law; attempts to preserve what is ripe for destruction.

No; I schooled you by showing that you took a single quote out of context in an effort to guilt Nietzscheans into equating Nietzsche with ‘selection’ (you may as well have said ‘National Socialism’, asshole, and done away with the faux-subtlety). I then showed you about half a dozen other passages contradicting what you’ve implied.

You’re a moralist, and a pisspoor one at that. Read moar!!111!

Here is the unedited post from the Nietzsche Fans thread you have been refering to:

As one can see I simply quoted from the text. Don’t see how it’s out of context. And made only a very brief comment that I got the impression of the natural selection doctrine, sometimes referred to as Darwinism. And rightfully so.It says “law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection”. I’m sorry if this offends you. Complain to Nietzsche, if you don’t like it. He wrote it, not me. Also, I actually read Darwins “Origin of Species” and “Descent of Man”, and a bunch of other stuff about evolution, both pro and con, before I read Nietzsche. Furthermore, this is not the only passage in the “Anti-Christ” that shows how Nietsche was influenced by the natural selection doctrine that was becoming widespread in the late 1800s. But it is perhaps the most blatantly obvious.

You mean “natural selection”? You know, it’s no secret that the “survival of the fittest” concept influenced just about every field of study in the 20th century, and it was really taking root in Nietsches day. Isn’t that were the “overman” idea came from?

But I didn’t. But, since you mentioned it, didn’t Nietsches “overman” idea have at least some influence on the Nazi master race idea? I have heard that it did. I know the natural selection doctrine influenced communism, unrestrained capitalism, nazism, etc. It’s the philosophy of despots.

Oh, personal attack. Haven’t read the forum rules lately, huh?

??? Don’t know what that means. Typo?

But I didn’t imply anything other than the natural selection idea was to be found in the text of the “Anti-Christ”, and explicitly in section 7. Are you saying Nietsche contradicted himself?

Don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment. You should read Epictetus. Stoics believed in morals.

Steady insults. Trying to get banned from the forum are ya?

Read what?

Thank you for the lesson in German, Sauwelios.The word Entwicklung would therefore be found in the quote as follows, if I understand you correctly:

The phrase I was primarily questioning was law of natural selection. According to the Oxford-Duden German dictionary the phrase “natural selection”, if I’m reading it correctly, is naturliche auslese.

Let me set up an example and tell me if I’m employing the German correctly. Does the German in Nietzsche’s Anti-Christ 7 read like this:

“Pity thwarts the whole law of Entwicklung (evolution or development), which is the law of naturliche auslese (natural selection). It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction”

Is that correct? Did the translator derive “natural selection” from “naturliche auslese”?

Let me ask the question another way. In 1859 Charles Darwin published his book titled:

“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”

That’s the full title. Now, when they translated that book into German what words did they use for Natural Selection? Does the title say:

“On the Origin of Species by Means of Naturliche Auslese (Natural Selection)”…

In other words, are the German words they used for “Natural Selection” in that title to Darwins book the same identical words that appear in that sentence in Anti-Christ 7?

Nietzsche uses the word Selektion.

dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=hPXz … =Selektion

We can dismiss the meaning of “screening”, of course. Now let us see what Wikipedia says about selection:

“Natural selection is the most familiar type of selection by name. The breeding of dogs, cows and horses, however, represents “artificial selection.” Subcategories of natural selection are also sometimes distinguished. These include sexual selection, ecological selection, stabilizing selection, disruptive selection and directional selection (more on these below).”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection

As you can see, this includes all meanings given by LEO except for the one we dismissed.

As you can see from this image, sexual selection is a form of natural selection. This means there are broadly two kinds of selection: natural and artificial. Wikipedia puts the phrase “artificial selection” between quotation marks, I think, because human beings and the things made by them are still a part of nature, of course. What then is artificial selection as opposed to natural selection? As the article on artificial selection puts it, the latter is intentional. In the article on sexual selection, something called “mate choice” is mentioned. This is a natural preference a member of one sex may have for certain members of the opposite sex (members with certain traits). Though this is a matter of “choice”, it is unintentional because it is instinctive. I think therefore that “intentional”, in the article on artificial selection, means so much as “rational”: man has reasons to breed certain types of cows, cows with certain traits.

Now Nietzsche says pity crosses the law of selection. This can only happen by means of articificial selection. Pity crosses natural selection by influencing or even determining artificial selection. When this happens, what happens is that emotion overpowers reason. Nietzsche uses the word Mitleid, which is literally “compassion” (both mean literally “suffering with”: see etymonline.com/index.php?term=compassion). I think “pity” is a better translation, though. But the word “compassion” is instructive as it includes the word “passion”. And a passion is basically a strong emotion. The emotion of Mitleid, therefore, is so strong that it tends to overpower reason. This is why Nietzsche says somewhere (I quote this from heart) that he recognised Mitleid as “more dangerous than any vice”.

Nietzsche uses the Latinism Selektion rather than the Germanic Auslese. These words are more or less interchangeable, as they both derive from words meaning “to read” (see dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=hPXz…&search=Lesen). I think he used the Latinism because it is a more technical term (as you can see at LEO, Auslese is translated as “selection” whereas Selektion is translated as “selection [biol.]”. Auslese may mean any form of selection, whereas Selektion means specific, especially biological, forms of selection. But why then did he not use the Latinism Evolution rather than the Germanic Entwicklung? I think because he meant both natural development (id est, “evolution” in the Darwinian sense) as well as artificial development, even design (which LEO provides as a possible translation of Entwicklung). Pity does not “just” cross natural development. More primarily, it crosses rational artificial development - that development by which man tries to perfect nature through art (in the broadest sense of the word). Thus the Spartans sought to perfect nature by breeding and disciplining a certain type of man. As one Moody Lawless once wrote:

“The Spartans themselves were art;- they lived art, they embodied art, they personified art - so much so, that there was no distinction bewteen art and life in Sparta.”

In the light of what we just saw about Entwicklung, we might wish to change our translation to:

“Christianity is called the religion of pity…Pity crosses the whole law of development, which is the law of selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction.”

For Nietzsche did not just mean natural development (“evolution” in the Darwinian sense).

Edward Osborn Wilson made the following (in)famous allegory. He compared man to a photograph, and said that “nature” (genetics) was the negative of this photograph, whereas “nurture” was the development of this photograph. Nietzsche also meant this kind of development: the realisation of a man’s full potential:

“Christianity […] has corrupted the reason even of those strongest in spirit […]. The most pitiful example—the corruption of Pascal”…
[AC 5.]

Pascal was potentially a kind of overman, according to Nietzsche. But Christianity crossed his personal development, and thereby thwarted his full self-realisation.

Some corrections:

Not from words meaning “to read”, but from words from which the words for “reading” in both languages (Latin and German) are derived.

More primarily. It changes the art that seeks to perfect nature into the black art that seeks to botch nature, like a prince into a frog.

“Even in the past this higher type has appeared often: but as a fortunate accident, as an exception, never as something willed. In fact, it has been the type most dreaded, almost the dreadful;—and from dread the opposite type was willed, bred, and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick human animal—the Christian…”
[AC 3.]

The wild human animal has been tamed. But it should not be tamed, not be weakened so we may easily master it, but mastered in its strength so we may harness that strength. The passions must be channeled, not killed. This means even one’s compassion must be channeled, not killed; mastered, not weakened.

“Education in those rulers’ virtues that master even one’s benevolence and pity: the great cultivator’s virtues (“forgiving one’s enemies” is child’s play in comparison), the affect of the creator must be elevated–no longer to work on marble!”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 983.]

The creator must be educated so that he can work on men - cultivating them, breeding and disciplining them, - developing them.

If anyone sees Satyr around, tell him to avoid this arguement, because I think he might just lose one PC monitor to an anger related incident if he happens by it. :laughing:
I wouldn’t blame him…I’d give him mine as a mark of respect.

Seriously…tch, tch, tch…

Thank you for letting us know you’re watching us from above and enjoying it, Mindset (even though you’re shaking your head at our silliness).

I did some searching and found the German translation to the title of Darwins Origin of Species; Translated by H.G. Bronn and J. Victor Carus in 1876:

“Ãœber die Entstehung der Arten durch natürliche Zuchtwahl oder die Erhaltung der begünstigten Rassen im Kampfe um’s Dasein.”

So the answer to that question is natürliche Zuchtwahl.

Okay, so in that sentence in Anti-Christ 7 Nietzsche said “Gesetz der Selektion” which Kaufmann translated as “law of selection” and Mencken translated as “law of natural selection.”

Both are correct, right? Kaufmann simply translated it word for word, whereas Mencken gave it’s fuller meaning to the English reader.

When Nietzsche said Selektion in Anti-Christ 7 he was not talking about selecting his favorite color or selecting a brand of coffee, he meant natural selection (natürliche Zuchtwahl), right?

No, I disagree. The word Zuchtwahl is, of course, more basic than the phrase natürliche Zuchtwahl. Zuchtwahl literally means “breed selection”. So breed selection was known to man before natural breed selection. Darwin’s novel idea was that nature, too, selected breeds. This selection of breeds (or genes) was what he called “natural selection”.

Nietzsche means both natural and artificial breed selection when he says “Selektion”. Let us reread the essence of what I said before:

So pity first crosses the right form of artificial selection (artificial selection aimed at development), and then this crossed form of artificial selection (artificial selection aimed at the preservation of the many, if necessary at the cost of the few) crosses natural selection, which also aims at development. This, by my reading at any rate, is what Nietzsche meant.