The Portable Nietzsche (62 page)

“O Dionysus, divine one, why do you pull me by my ears?” Ariadne once asked her philosophic lover during one of those famous dialogues on Naxos. “I find a kind of humor in your ears, Ariadne: why are they not even longer?”

 

20

Nothing is beautiful, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its
first
truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man—and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of “ugly.” Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition—even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol—all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, “ugly.” A
hatred
is aroused—but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the
decline
of
his type
. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness—it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep.

 

21

Schopenhauer
. Schopenhauer, the last German worthy of consideration (who represents a
European
event like Goethe, like Hegel, like Heinrich Heine, and not merely a local event, a “national” one), is for a psychologist a first-rate case: namely, as a maliciously ingenious attempt to adduce in favor of a nihilistic total depreciation of life precisely the counter-instances, the great self-affirmations of the “will to life,” life's forms of exuberance. He has interpreted
art
, heroism, genius, beauty, great sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, in turn, as consequences of “negation” or of the “will's” need to negate—the greatest psychological counterfeit in all history, not counting Christianity. On closer inspection, he is at this point merely the heir of the Christian interpretation: only he knew how to approve that which Christianity had repudiated, the great cultural facts of humanity—albeit in a Christian, that is, nihilistic, manner (namely, as ways of “redemption,” as anticipations of “redemption,” as stimuli of the need for “redemption”).

 

22

I take a single case. Schopenhauer speaks of
beauty
with a melancholy fervor. Why? Because he sees in it a bridge on which one will go farther, or develp a thirst to go farther. Beauty is for him a momentary redemption from the “will”—a lure to eternal redemption. Particularly, he praises beauty as the redeemer from “the focal point of the will,” from sexuality—in beauty he sees the negation of the drive toward procreation. Queer saint! Somebody seems to be contradicting you; I fear it is nature. To what end is there any such thing as beauty in tone, color, fragrance, or rhythmic movement in nature? What is it that beauty evokes? Fortunately, a philosopher contradicts him too. No lesser authority than that of the divine Plato (so Schopenhauer himself calls him) maintains a different proposition: that all beauty incites procreation, that just this is the
proprium
of its effect, from the most sensual up to the most spiritual.

 

23

Plato goes further. He says with an innocence possible only for a Greek, not a “Christian,” that there would be no Platonic philosophy at all if there were not such beautiful youths in Athens: it is only their sight that transposes the philosopher's soul into an erotic trance, leaving it no peace until it lowers the seed of all exalted things into such beautiful soil. Another queer saint! One does not trust one's ears, even if one should trust Plato. At least one guesses that they philosophized differently in Athens, especially in public. Nothing is less Greek than the conceptual web-spinning of a hermit—
amor intellectualis dei
³³
after the fashion of Spinoza. Philosophy after the fashion of Plato might rather be defined as an erotic contest, as a further development and turning inward of the ancient agonistic gymnastics and of its
presuppositions
. What ultimately grew out of this philosophic eroticism of Plato? A new art form of the Greek agon: dialectics. Finally, I recall— against Schopenhauer and in honor of Plato—that the whole higher culture and literature of
classical
France too grew on the soil of sexual interest. Everywhere in it one may look for the amatory, the senses, the sexual contest, “the woman”—one will never look in vain.

 

24

L'art pour l'art
. The fight against purpose in art is always a fight against the moralizing tendency in art, against its subordination to morality.
L'art pour l'art
means, “The devil take morality!” But even this hostility still betrays the overpowering force of the prejudice. When the purpose of moral preaching and of improving man has been excluded from art, it still does not follow by any means that art is altogether purposeless, aimless, senseless—in short,
l'art pour l'art
, a worm chewing its own tail. “Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!”—that is the talk of mere passion. A psychologist, on the other hand, asks: what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? choose? prefer? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations. Is this merely a “moreover”? an accident? something in which the artist's instinct had no share? Or is it not the very presupposition of the artist's ability? Does his basic instinct aim at art, or rather at the sense of art, at life? at a desirability of life? Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as
l'art pour l'art
?

One question remains: art also makes apparent much that is ugly, hard, and questionable in life; does it not thereby spoil life for us? And indeed there have been philosophers who attributed this sense to it: “liberation from the will” was what Schopenhauer taught as the over-all end of art; and with admiration he found the great utility of tragedy in its “evoking resignation.” But this, as I have already suggested, is the pessimist's perspective and “evil eye.” We must appeal to the artists themselves. What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Is it not precisely the state
without
fear in the face of the fearful and questionable that he is showing? This state itself is a great desideratum; whoever knows it, honors it with the greatest honors. He communicates it—
must
communicate it, provided he is an artist, a genius of communication. Courage and freedom of feeling before a powerful enemy, before a sublime calamity, before a problem that arouses dread—this triumphant state is what the tragic artist chooses, what he glorifies. Before tragedy, what is warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalia; whoever is used to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man praises his own being through tragedy—to him alone the tragedian presents this drink of sweetest cruelty.

 

25

To put up with people, to keep open house with one's heart—that is liberal, but that is merely liberal. One recognizes those hearts which are capable of
noble
hospitality by the many draped windows and closed shutters: they keep their best rooms empty. Why? Because they expect guests with whom one does not “put up.”

 

26

We no longer esteem ourselves sufficiently when we communicate ourselves. Our true experiences are not at all garrulous. They could not communicate themselves even if they tried. That is because they lack the right word. Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond. In all talk there is a grain of contempt. Language, it seems, was invented only for what is average, medium, communicable. With language the speaker immediately vulgarizes himself. Out of a morality for deaf-mutes and other philosophers.

 

27

“This picture is enchantingly beautiful!”
³⁴
The literary female: unsatisfied, excited, her heart and entrails void, ever listening, full of painful curiosity, to the imperative, which whispers from the depths of her organism, “
aut liberi aut libri”
³⁵
—the literary female: educated enough to understand the voice of nature even when it speaks Latin, and yet vain enough and goose enough to speak secretly with herself in French,
“je me verrai, je me lirai, je m'extasierai et je dirai: Possible, que j'aie eu tant d'esprit?”
³⁶

 

28

The “impersonal” get a word in. “Nothing is easier for us than to be wise, patient, and superior. We drip with the oil of forgiveness and sympathy, we are absurdly just, we pardon everything. For that very reason we ought to be a little more strict with ourselves; for that very reason we ought to breed a little affect in ourselves from time to time, a little vice of an affect. It may be hard on us; and among ourselves we may even laugh at the sight we thus offer. But what can be done about it? No other way of self-overcoming is left to us any more: this is our asceticism,
our
penance.” Developing personal traits: the virtue of the “impersonal.”

 

29

From a doctoral examination
. “What is the task of all higher education?” To turn men into machines. “What are the means?” Man must learn to be bored. “How is that accomplished?” By means of the concept of duty. “Who serves as the model?” The philologist: he teaches grinding. “Who is the perfect man?” The civil servant. “Which philosophy offers the highest formula for the civil servant?” Kant's: the civil servant as a thing-in-itself raised up to be judge over the civil servant as phenomenon.

 

30

The right to stupidity
. The weary laborer who breathes slowly, looks genial, and lets things go as they may—this typical figure, encountered today, in the age of labor (and of the “
Reich
”!), in all classes of society, claims
art
, no less, as his own sphere, including books and, above all, magazines—and even more the beauties of nature, Italy. The man of the evening, with his “savage drives gone to sleep” (as Faust says), needs a summer resort, the seashore, glaciers, Bayreuths. In such ages art has a right to pure foolishness—as a kind of vacation for spirit, wit, and feeling. Wagner understood that. Pure foolishness restores.
³⁷

 

31

Another problem of diet
. The means by which Julius Caesar defended himself against sickliness and headaches: tremendous marches, the most frugal way of life, uninterrupted sojourn in the open air, continuous exertion—these are, in general, the universal rules of preservation and protection against the extreme vulnerability of that subtle machine, working under the highest pressure, which we call genius.

 

32

The immoralist speaks
. Nothing offends the philosopher's taste more than man, insofar as man desires. If he sees man in action, even if he sees this most courageous, most cunning, most enduring animal lost in labyrinthian distress—how admirable man appears to him! He still likes him. But the philosopher despises the desiring man, also the “desirable” man—and altogether all desirabilities, all ideals of man. If a philosopher could be a nihilist, he would be one because he finds nothing behind all the ideals of man. Or not even nothing—but only what is abject, absurd, sick, cowardly, and weary, all kinds of dregs out of the emptied cup of his life. Man being so venerable in his reality, how is it that he deserves no respect insofar as he desires? Must he atone for being so capable in reality? Must he balance his activity, the strain on head and will in all his activity, by stretching his limbs in the realm of the imaginary and the absurd?

The history of his desirabilities has so far been the
partie honteuse
of man: one should beware of reading in it too long. What justifies man is his reality—it will eternally justify him. How much greater is the worth of the real man, compared with any merely desired, dreamed-up, foully fabricated man? with any ideal man? And it is only the ideal man who offends the philosopher's taste.

 

33

The natural value of egoism
. Self-interest is worth as much as the person who has it: it can be worth a great deal, and it can be unworthy and contemptible. Every individual may be scrutinized to see whether he represents the ascending or the descending line of life. Having made that decision, one has a canon for the worth of his self-interest If he represents the ascending line, then his worth is indeed extraordinary—and for the sake of life as a whole, which takes a step farther through him, the care for his preservation and for the creation of the best conditions for him may even be extreme. The single one, the “individual,” as hitherto understood by the people and the philosophers alike, is an error after all: he is nothing by himself, no atom, no “link in the chain,” nothing merely inherited from former times; he is the whole single line of humanity up to himself. If he represents the descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, and sickness (sicknesses are, in general, the consequences of decay, not its causes), then he has small worth, and the minimum of decency requires that he take away as little as possible from those who have turned out well. He is merely their parasite.