In his criticisms of modern society and philosophy, Nietzsche stresses the importance of the tension between the individual and the crowd. While he believes that an antagonism between the two has always existed, older societies within different moralities—without good and evil—naturally separated “noble” individuals from the working masses. Nobles can never fit in with the crowd and must be apart—or above—in order to think higher thoughts. Their greater physical and philosophical strength allowed them to do this, resisting a society’s natural drive to become more and more homogenous.
In modern society, however, what Nietzsche calls the “herd man” is ascendant. This is because the slave morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition has made pity into its greatest virtue, and therefore the abolishment of suffering has become society’s highest goal. To Nietzsche, as diverse a range of political beliefs as liberalism, socialism, anarchism, and religious millenarism all express this drive to abolish suffering. Indeed, while modern European nations and societies still have rulers, Nietzsche argues that these rulers have abandoned their duty, as the slave morality they have adopted has left them with a “bad conscience” regarding their rule (a feeling of guilt derived from the “immorality” of commanding others). Instead of consciously commanding, then pretend to obey, deferring to the people, state, or commonwealth they represent; this attitude is encapsulated in their self-description as “servants of the people.” Moreover, Nietzsche finds that while the herd man glorifies himself and forecloses the possibility of true nobility in society, he is also ready at all times to be ruled, if such a ruler—or tyrant—should appear, as the case of Napoleon demonstrates. Nietzsche fears that under the herd man’s domination, the future can only become worse, as the collision of crowds and nations leads to ever larger-scale politics—and larger-scale war. While true, “noble” philosophers justifiably desire to separate themselves from such a crowd, Nietzsche argues that they cannot afford to become hermits, but most commit themselves to reestablishing nobility in their thoughts and actions.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Individual and the Crowd ThemeTracker
The Individual and the Crowd Quotes in Beyond Good and Evil
In this, it seems to me, we should agree with these skeptical anti-realists and knowledge microscopists of today: their instinct, which repels them from modern reality, is unrefuted—what do their retrograde bypaths concern us! The main thing about them is not that they wish to go “back,” but that they wish to get—away. A little more strength, flight, courage, and artistic power, and they would want to rise—not return!
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.”
I do not say this because I want it to happen: the opposite would be rather more after my heart—I mean such an increase in the menace of Russia that Europe would have to resolve to become menacing, too, namely, to acquire one will by means of a new caste that would rule Europe, a long, terrible will of its own that would be able to cast its goals millennia hence—so the long-drawn-out comedy of its many splinter states as well as its dynastic and democratic splinter wills would come to an end. The time for petty politics is over: the very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth—the compulsion to large-scale politics.
But while the democratization of Europe leads to the production of a type that is prepared for slavery in the subtlest sense, in single, exceptional cases the strong human being will have to turn out stronger and richer than perhaps ever before—thanks to the absence of prejudice from his training, thanks to the tremendous manifoldness of practice, art, and mask. I meant to say: the democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the cultivation of tyrants—taking that word in every sense, including the most spiritual.
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.
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.
