Beyond Good and Evil: 4. Epigrams and Interludes Summary & Analysis

Nietzsche makes various observations about human nature, beginning with the difficulty of separating knowledge from morality. He then notes the ways in which humans unconsciously repress their own memories, repeating their experiences again and again. These experiences, to Nietzsche, stem from a deeper character, one that is largely unconscious. Unconscious behaviors therefore tend to condition one’s higher ideals, not the other way around. To support this, Nietzsche argues that two individuals with different habits—unconscious expressions of their personality—but the same principles will live very different lives.

Nietzsche draws a sharp distinction between men and women. He believes that because similar affects express themselves differently in men and women, they are unable to truly communicate their experiences and are doomed to misunderstand each other. Nietzsche finds in the vanity of women a contempt for the idea of “woman,” an internalized self-hatred. He then forcefully criticizes virtues such as affability and the seriousness of adults, arguing that the former betrays a contempt of other people, and that the latter is not true maturity, which is found in returning to play.

Nietzsche continues to criticize Christianity, arguing that if Christians truly loved their fellow humans, they would still burn heretics at the stake. He also finds that nothing is moral as such but can only be interpreted morally. He continues to contrast women to men, arguing that women cannot keep their sense of perspective in affairs of love, and that while sensuality speeds the growth of love it also leaves such love more fragile. Returning to the question of will, Nietzsche states that the will to overcome any particular affect is but another affect.

Reaffirming his conception of rank, Nietzsche claims that a people is merely a way of creating the conditions for a few “great men,” and then moving beyond them, too. He also distinguishes humankind from their abilities, describing talent as “a hiding place.” He continues to make remarks about the nature of women, describing them in harshly negative, animalistic terms. To Nietzsche, women are jealous and vicious and incapable of philosophy; indeed, he claims that a woman who wishes to be a scholar must be sterile to have developed such a “masculinity of a taste.”

Nietzsche reminds those who would fight monsters of the danger of becoming monsters themselves, warning them of the dangers of the abyss within the human soul. At the same time, he affirms the conditional nature of evil, suggesting that a value considered evil at any given time was once considered good. He goes so far as to state directly that any unconditional moral demands are pathological, and that mistrust and mockery are signs of a healthy intellect.

Nietzsche finds that Christianity, rather than fighting vice, actually created it, as it warped Eros into the religious understanding of vice. He argues that knowledge excludes pity, which is a superfluous quality in the pursuit of truth. He also affirms the primacy of psychology in actions and motivations, claiming that humans love their own desire, not the desired object, and find vanity offensive only because they are vain themselves. As philosophers—and humankind in general—have not been sufficiently honest about what seeking the truth means, the highest kindness—honesty—appears malicious to modern morality.