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Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military officer who rose to power during the latter part of the French Revolution, eventually becoming Emperor. Renowned for his strategic and political prowess, Napoleon was a hugely influential—and controversial—figure in Europe, both in his lifetime and in subsequent historiography of the era. Napoleon’s role as a “progressive dictator” moving history forward has been noted by many philosophers, including Hegel. To Nietzsche, Napoleon is both an example of the heights of greatness that the supra-national Europeans of the future can reach, and of the disappointment of their inevitable failure to live up to their own ideals and subsequent descent into “fatherlandishness.” Nietzsche also offers Napoleon’s coming to power on the heels of a democratic revolution as proof of the egalitarian herd man’s unconscious desire for dictatorship.
Napoleon Quotes in Beyond Good and Evil
The Beyond Good and Evil quotes below are all either spoken by Napoleon or refer to Napoleon . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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8. Peoples and Fatherlands Quotes
What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things good and bad, and above all one thing that is both of the best and of the worst: the grand style in morality, the terribleness and majesty of infinite demands, infinite meanings, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionabilities—and hence precisely the most attractive, captious, and choicest part of those plays of color and seductions to life in whose afterglow the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, is burning now—perhaps burning itself out. We artists among the spectators and philosophers are—grateful for this to the Jews.
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This passage expresses the complex and ambiguous feelings Nietzsche has toward Judaism as a philosophy and theology. While Nietzsche tends to name Christianity as the source of the religious instinct which has institutionalized Platonic ideas of “the good” throughout Europe, he is referring just as much to the Judeo-Christian tradition, as Christian theology borrows heavily from Jewish thought. Indeed, Nietzsche mentions earlier in the book the significance of Jewish slave morality in the development of this tradition. At the same time, he praises the Old Testament as a vital, meaningful work and heaps scorn on the New Testament as a Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit u
In all the more profound and comprehensive men of this century, the over-all direction of the mysterious workings of their soul was to prepare the way for this new synthesis and to anticipate experimentally the European of the future: only in their foregrounds or in weaker hours, say in old age, did they belong to the “fatherlandish”—they were merely taking a rest from themselves when they became “patriots.” I am thinking of such human beings as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: do not hold it against me when I include Richard Wagner, too, with them, for one should not allow oneself to be led astray about him by his own misunderstandings—geniuses of his type rarely have the right to understand themselves.
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In this passage, Nietzsche articulates just how “great” individuals as he understands them fit into the fabric of modern, “hybrid” Europe. To Nietzsche the great individuals of modern Europe could only be the highest expressions of its contradictory nature and are therefore themselves “hybrids” to extreme degrees. Despite their apparent nationalism, all the individuals he names were more expressive of modern European ideals than any particular national character, facilitating through their art, philosophy, or politics the “synthesis” of Europe and the European character. To Nietzsche, all these “higher men” expressed in different ways the great questions of their time—questions which Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus volu
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Napoleon Character Timeline in Beyond Good and Evil
The timeline below shows where the character Napoleon appears in Beyond Good and Evil. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
5. Natural History of Morals
...own right. The falseness of this doctrine of equality is proven by the case of Napoleon; when someone ready to command appears, the herd is not only willing but happy to...
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