Friedrich Nietzsche Character Analysis

[U]nder what conditions did man invent for himself those judgements of value, Good and Evil? And what intrinsic value do they possess in themselves? Have they up to the present advanced human welfare, or rather have they harmed our race? Are they a symptom of distress, impoverishment and degeneration of life? Or, conversely do we find in them an expression of the abundant vitality and vigour of life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future?

Let us express this new demand: we need a critique of moral values; the value of these values is for the first time to be called into question—and for this purpose it is necessary to know the conditions and circumstances under which these values grew, evolved and changed[.]

The knightly-aristocratic values rest upon a powerful physical development, a richness and even superabundance of health, together with what is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the journey—on everything, in fact, which involves strong, free and joyous action.

The slaves' revolt in morality begins when resentment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values—a resentment experienced by those who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to obtain their satisfaction in imaginary acts of vengeance. While all aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says ‘no’ ab initio to what is ‘outside itself,’ ‘different from itself’ and ‘not itself;’ and this ‘no’ is its creative act […] its action is fundamentally a reaction.

What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I cannot deal with alone, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! That something foul comes near me; that I must inhale the putrid odour of the entrails of a rotten soul!

Nietzsche uses this metaphor because he believes that the prevailing moral code in modern Europe characterizes aggression and power-seeking behavior as evil. To Nietzsche, however, these are fundamental aspects of human nature inherited by modern people from our ancient ancestors (predators who instinctively derived satisfaction from hunting and killing). He thinks that modern European culture forces people to repress their aggressive instincts, which makes them suffer, and that this suffering prevents them from thriving and experiencing life with joy and stunts humanity. He symbolizes this stultification by imagining that Europe isn’t full of healthy, happy people who are actively living as fully realized human beings. Instead, it’s full of people who are forced to hold back a part of themselves, so they aren’t really living but suffering and dying, and their corpses are giving off “bad air.” The metaphor of bad air thus represents humanity’s regression or decline in modern Europe.

Beyond Good and Evil—at any rate that is not the same as ‘Beyond Good and Bad.’

In Ancient Greece and Rome, there’s no real concept of evil. A person is “good” if they are free to embrace their human instincts and pursue strength, power, and joy. A person who’s not able to do so is simply unlucky: they’re not endowed with social privilege, or they’ve been bewitched by the gods, or they’re a bit foolish. In that sense, there’s no such thing as a fundamentally evil person, or fundamentally evil behavior. The opposite of being good is more like being less good—or “Bad”—as in worse off. However, when oppressed people develop their rival moral code, they characterize their oppressors as fundamentally evil for being strong, powerful, aggressive, and experiencing joy from such behavior. Thus, the concept of “evil” enters the picture. So, going “Beyond Good and Evil” means going beyond a way of seeing natural, human power-seeking behavior as “evil” in and of itself. This is what Nietzsche longs for in his own culture.

The breeding of an animal that is free to make promises—is not this precisely the paradoxical task which nature has set for itself in regard to man? Is not this the essential problem of man?

How much blood and cruelty lies at the foundation of all ‘good things!’

Enmity, cruelty, the delight in persecution, in attack, destruction, pillage—the turning of all these instincts against their very owners is the origin of the ‘bad conscience.’

Indebtedness to God: this thought becomes his instrument of torture.

What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?

At any rate, this should be the case with all mortals who are sound in mind and body, who are far from regarding their delicate balance between ‘animal’ and ‘angel’ as necessarily an objection to existence—the brightest and most insightful of them, such as Goethe and Hafiz, have even seen in this another of life's charms. Such ‘conflicts’ actually make life all the more enticing.

He suddenly realized that more could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian […] notion of the sovereignty of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music set apart from and distinguished from all the other arts, music as the independent art-in-itself, not like the other arts, affording images of the phenomenal world, but rather speaking the language of the will itself, straight out of the ‘abyss,’ as its most personal, original and direct manifestation.

But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case and so, from the very beginning, we get from our philosophers definitions upon which the lack of any refined personal experience squats like a big fat stupid worm, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the beautiful. ‘That is beautiful,’ says Kant, ‘which pleases without interest.’

Without interest?! Compare this definition with this other one, made by an ‘artist,’ an ‘observer’ truly capable of aesthetic appreciation—by Stendhal, who once called the beautiful une promesse de bonheur.

Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful—the calming of the will—but is this effect the usual one?

Every animal […] strives instinctively after the most favourable conditions: those under which it can exert its full strength, and experience its greatest feeling of power; every animal also instinctively abhors (and with an acute sense ‘surpassing all reason’) any kind of disruption or hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his path to this optimum (it is not his way to ‘happiness’ of which I speak, but his path to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in point of fact in many cases his way to misery).

We know the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, humility chastity; and if we look closely at the lives of all the great productive, creative intellects, we will find these present again and again, in some measure.

There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a ‘knowing’ from a perspective, and the more emotions we express concerning a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘idea’ of that thing, our ‘objectivity.’

Look into the background of every family, of every institution, of every community; you will see everywhere the struggle of the sick against the healthy[.]

‘I suffer: someone is to blame’—all sick sheep think this. But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him, ‘Quite so, my sheep, it must be the fault of someone but you yourself are that someone, you alone are to blame—you yourself are to blame for yourself;’ that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is at least attained thereby, as I have said: resentment is—diverted.

The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace of deepest sleep, anaesthesia in short—this is regarded by the sufferers and the absolutely depressed as their supreme good[.]

No! This ‘modern science’—mark this well—is now the best ally for the ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the least conscious, least spontaneous, least known of allies!

Man will desire oblivion rather than not desire at all.