Beyond Good and Evil

by

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Knowledge, Truth, and Untruth Theme Icon
The Individual and the Crowd Theme Icon
The Dark Side of Modernity Theme Icon
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As the title of the book suggests, Nietzsche finds that moral philosophy’s central problem lies in the question of good and evil. Nietzsche believes that modern conceptions of good and evil are a historical novelty and, rather than expressing fundamental truths about human nature, they actually repress and distort our true values. To Nietzsche, the approach that European and Judeo-Christian philosophy has taken to good and evil is not only wrong, but actively harmful. Nietzsche believes that humans are fundamentally aggressive animals, and that societies naturally form through conquest, following a drive he calls the will to power. The strongest warriors become the ruling caste of new, mixed societies of masters and slaves, and their qualities are valued as virtues of the “good,” or the noble. From the noble perspective, or master morality, those who they rule over are “contemptible” but not evil; Nietzsche frequently explains this through the metaphor of the noble looking down on the ruled from a great height, a perspective which precludes personal animosity. The ruled, however, develop their own morality, a slave morality, which associates power with evil and the qualities of the enslaved, such as weakness, industriousness, and friendliness, with good.

Both Judaism and Christianity originated in slave rebellions against larger, more powerful warrior empires, so Nietzsche believes they consist of slave moralities at their core. Even though Christianity has lost much of its influence in modern Europe, the idea of good and evil that it promoted has become ingrained and still orients the moral thinking of even anti-Christian (or atheist) democrats and revolutionaries. Within philosophy specifically, Nietzsche finds that this biased vision of good and evil has prevented philosophers from making many discoveries, as they have been unconsciously striving to prove their own (Judeo-Christian) morality correct instead of approaching their work with an open mind. The task for the “philosophers of the future,” therefore, is both to discover anew how to move beyond good and evil, and to return to the truths ancient societies like the Greeks, Romans, and Indians discovered about human nature. Only by doing this, Nietzsche argues, can humankind truly develop itself and advance.

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Good and Evil Quotes in Beyond Good and Evil

Below you will find the important quotes in Beyond Good and Evil related to the theme of Good and Evil.
Preface Quotes

Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be conceded that the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was a dogmatist’s error—namely, Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and the good as such. But now that it is overcome, now that Europe is breathing freely again after this nightmare and at least can enjoy a healthier sleep, we whose task is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all that strength which has been fostered by the fight against this error. To be sure, it meant standing truth on her head and denying perspective, the basic condition of all life, when one spoke of spirit and the good as Plato did.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker), Schopenhauer, Plato
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:
1. On the Prejudices of Philosophers Quotes

To recognize untruth as a condition of life—that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:

Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker), Plato
Page Number: 203
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4. Epigrams and Interludes Quotes

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena—

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker), Plato
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Depths
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:

Objections, digressions, gay mistrust, the delight in mockery are signs of health: everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 280
Explanation and Analysis:

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated—into a vice.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
5. Natural History of Morals Quotes

Every morality is, opposed to laisser aller, a bit of tyranny against “nature”; also against “reason”; but this in itself is no objection, as long as we do not have some other morality which permits us to decree that every kind of tyranny and unreason is impermissible. What is essential and inestimable in every morality is that it constitutes a long compulsion: to understand Stoicism or Port-Royal or Puritanism, one should recall the compulsion under which every language so far has achieved strength and freedom—the metrical compulsion of rhyme and rhythm.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker), The Stoics
Page Number: 290
Explanation and Analysis:

Whoever examines the conscience of the European today will have to pull the same imperative out of a thousand moral folds and hideouts—the imperative of herd timidity: “we want that some day there should be nothing any more to be afraid of!” Some day—throughout Europe, the will and way to this day is now called “progress.”

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 304
Explanation and Analysis:
6. We Scholars Quotes

Let us look more closely: what is the scientific man? To begin with, a type of man that is not noble, with the virtues of a type of man that is not noble, which is to say, a type that does not dominate and is neither authoritative nor self-sufficient: he has industriousness, patient acceptance of his place in rank and file, evenness and moderation in his abilities and needs, an instinct for his equals and for what they need; for example, that bit of independence and green pasture without which there is no quiet work, that claim to honor and recognition (which first of all presupposes literal recognition and recognizability), that sunshine of a good name, that constant attestation of his value and utility which is needed to overcome again and again the internal mistrust which is the sediment in the hearts of all dependent men and herd animals.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 315
Explanation and Analysis:
7. Our Virtues Quotes

Our pity is a higher and more farsighted pity: we see how man makes himself smaller, how you make him smaller—and there are moments when we behold your very pity with indescribable anxiety, when we resist this pity—when we find your seriousness more dangerous than any frivolity. You want, if possible—and there is no more insane “if possible”—to abolish suffering. And we? It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Well-being as you understand it—that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible—that makes his destruction desirable.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 343
Explanation and Analysis:

Finally consider that even the seeker after knowledge forces his spirit to recognize things against the inclination of the spirit, and often enough also against the wishes of his heart—by waying of saying No where he would like to say Yes, and adore—and thus acts as an artist and transfigurer of cruelty. Indeed, any insistence on profundity and thoroughness is a violation, a desire to hurt the basic will of the spirit which unceasingly strives for the apparent and superficial—in all desire to know there is a drop of cruelty.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 349
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker), Plato, Napoleon
Page Number: 375
Explanation and Analysis:
9. What Is Noble Quotes

“Exploitation” does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life.

If this should be an innovation as a theory—as a reality it is the primordial fact of all history: people ought to be honest with themselves at least that far.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 393-394
Explanation and Analysis:

Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy—that is a hermit’s judgement: “There is something arbitrary in his stopping here to look back and look around, in his not digging deeper here but laying his spade aside; there is also something suspicious about it.” Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hideout, every word also a mask.

Related Characters: Nietzsche (speaker)
Page Number: 419
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