Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beyond Good and Evil, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Good and Evil
Knowledge, Truth, and Untruth
The Individual and the Crowd
The Dark Side of Modernity
Women and Men
Summary
Analysis
Nietzsche concedes that the philosophers of the future will still have virtues of their own, despite their rejection of traditional morality. Moreover, in this respect they will be similar to the dogmatic philosophers he criticizes, as having virtues will lead to—and require—a belief in own’s own virtue. Drawing as they will on different moralities, however, the philosophers of the future will find their virtues to be very different from the virtues that have been valued before them. Their moralities, however, will not be posturing, and will reject empty virtues like love of one’s enemies. Nietzsche cautions against those who cannot forgive others for witnessing their mistakes in matters of morality, and those who take too much pleasure from pointing out the ignorance of modern, bourgeois taste.
Here Nietzsche clarifies that he is not advocating for the abolishment of morality, which he believes is both an impossible and undesirable goal. What he hopes the philosophy of the future to achieve, rather, is a reconstituted morality which embraces human nature instead of trying to remake it in the image of “the good.” Such a morality will by necessity be almost unrecognizably different from the morality that Christian-influenced moral philosophy has developed.
Themes
Contrasting a genuine “high spirituality” with ordinary morals, Nietzsche argues that a developed spirituality always maintains the “order of rank” and is by no means disinterested. Disinterestedness, rather than being virtuous, is to Nietzsche a wasted potential virtue, the failure to fully develop one’s own capabilities. The morality of the future, rather, will be egoistic, rejecting pity. The morality of pity, moreover, expresses to Nietzsche a deep self-hatred, and he wonders whether it is the cause or the effect of Europe’s spiritual decline.
Nietzsche argues that the virtues of the nobles—those at the top of the social hierarchy—are structured by a spirituality which embraces self-interest, desiring to make the most of one’s own abilities and circumstances. Nietzsche again condemns pity, arguing that its privileged place in modern Europe reflects the self-destructive effects of Christian morality.
Themes
Just as the modern European does not possess genuine virtues, they also do not have a genuine connection to their own history. History is rather a “storage room for costumes” from which modern Europeans pick and choose. Nietzsche then asserts, paradoxically, that only modern Europeans possess the “historical sense” by which they create and develop their ideas of nations and culture.
Nietzsche’s concept of the “historical sense” is subtly but importantly distinct from history as such. This sense, rather, is a fundamentally modern, fabricated idea of history society uses to give itself meaning. With this understanding of the historical sense in mind, the difference between Nietzsche’s seemingly contradictory simultaneous arguments for national character and against nationalism and “fatherlandishness” becomes clear.
Themes
Only after the chaos and upheaval of modernity can such a sense of history develop, as before it there was no need to artificially reconstruct one’s relationship to history. To Nietzsche the historical sense is always ignoble and impure, but it too creates great individuals, like Shakespeare. All the same, it is incompatible with the full development of any one culture or society. Historical sense is incompatible with good taste, for both better and worse.
Nietzsche’s understanding of nationalism as a contemporary fabrication responding to the needs of modern society (rather than a true historical expression of a people or place) is highly out of place in the 19th century, despite its broad acceptance today. Similarly, his veneration for “purity” and dismissal of civilization presupposes the fascination with primitivism and abstractionism in European culture in the 20th century.
Themes
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Once more rejecting pity and the abolishment of suffering, Nietzsche clarifies that the philosophers of the future will still feel pity for their fellow humans: not pity for their pain, but pity for their failure to become more than they are. In order to create morals of the future, Nietzsche is willing to be slandered as an immoralist in the present. Nietzsche also values honesty to the point of hardness, but also warns against taking self-satisfaction in one’s honesty.
Nietzsche’s contradictory remarks on pity make it difficult to discern the place he imagines it having in the morality of the future. What is clear, however, is the central place self-development has in his vision as a question of a higher order than suffering or pity.
Themes
Arguing that all moral philosophy to date is boring, Nietzsche concedes that it would not be improved as a topic of general interest. Turning to utilitarianism, he harshly criticizes the English for both Puritanism and “scientific morality”; the latter, Nietzsche argues, does not serve the best interests of mankind but “the happiness of England.” He strongly rejects the concept of the general welfare, as this is incompatible with an order of rank. Nietzsche then argues against the fear of the animalistic side of humankind advocated by developed society, as all high culture is in fact a “spiritualization” of this cruelty and violence. To Nietzsche, the very desire for knowledge is violent, as the thinker forces their spirit through to the truth.
Nietzsche’s criticism of English utilitarianism rejects English utilitarianism’s central claim, which argues that society is capable of understanding and maximizing human wellbeing on a society-wide scale; that is, that “the good” has a provable, material expression too. Nietzsche not only believes this is impossible—he also thinks it is undesirable. Moreover, he views it as a cynical ploy on the part of the English, whose idea of “general welfare” is biased in favor of England and English culture. Nietzsche’s comments on violence restate his firm belief that violence and cruelty are not aberrations but key pillars of human psychology.
Themes
Clarifying what the will of the spirit means, Nietzsche argues that the spirit seeks to dominate while assimilating what it can and rejecting what it cannot; of all organs, the spirit is most like the stomach. At the same time, the spirit takes pleasure in deception and masks. With this understanding of the spirit in mind, the task is to “translate” humans back into nature, rejecting metaphysical distinctions between humans and animals. Continuing to compare learning to nourishment, Nietzsche suggests that knowledge changes the spirit of the learner, the majority of which is “deep down” and unknowable.
Nietzsche continues to reject a fundamental principle of both Christian thought and humanism, that of the distinction between humans and animals. To Nietzsche, human behavior is fundamentally animalistic and instinct driven, and no philosophy can find truth without accounting for this. Nietzsche’s understanding of the unconscious is in fact just another way of stating his understanding of instinct, as humans are motivated by inborn drives they do not understand, just like other animals.
Themes
Turning to the subject of women, Nietzsche forcefully criticizes both the movement for women’s emancipation and, more pointedly, the notion of “woman as such” that women have developed to advocate for that movement. Nietzsche argues that women do not want truth and are best controlled by fear and shame—of men and of themselves. In a string of puns, he advocates women’s silence, in church, politics, and on the question of women. He believes that women unconsciously despise themselves, and that they are bad writers and cooks.
Nietzsche has a viscerally negative reaction to the women’s emancipation movement, then very controversial in Europe. Nietzsche believes that the movement’s attempts to define women in relation to men—that is, as equals—are based on false premises. His claims in this section, which he largely makes without evidence, betray a deep misogyny, which some commentators have suggested stemmed from his unsuccessful love life and rejected courtships.
Themes
Denying the existence of a fundamental antagonism between men and women is ridiculous, Nietzsche finds. He rather thinks that European men should take an “Oriental” approach and treat women as property. The respect for women in modern Europe is another crime of democracy; in gaining rights, women lose all their “most womanly instincts.” This does not, however, mean that women become like men, but that they regress. Nietzsche paradoxically argues that since the new ideal of emancipated women and their male supporters is that of “woman as clerk,” the influence of women in Europe has decreased as they have become emancipated, as they no longer influence men through traditional means. What is valuable in women, to Nietzsche, is their closeness to nature and the fear and pity they elicit from men, qualities fast disappearing in the modern world.
Nietzsche explicitly argues that women should be treated like property, and that the movement for women’s emancipation is a product of the democratic movement and its weak, self-destructive morality. He claims, perhaps not entirely convincingly, that emancipation is bad for women too, as once emancipated they can only approximate the herd man. His argument that women actually lose influence by giving up their positions “as women” also lacks evidence, with the sole example offered being that of Napoleon’s mother, who in fact largely did not control the actions of her son.
Themes
