Beyond Good and Evil
A collection of 296 aphorisms, the work is an overview on the philosophy and the polemics of Nietzsche. Aside from roasting just about every single school of philosophy out there in the world, I found the work to be incisive yet sometimes very dry. This work first addresses philosophers and their psychological weaknesses which I agreed very much with, then goes into the idea of the “free spirit” and on the fascinating idea of “Will to Power” as the central motivator for life. He also has long sections on religion, morals, and nationalism, all of which I found to be dry and circumstantial. The last section, titled “What is Noble?” is an interesting introspection into human psychology which I liked. The presentation in the style of aphorisms is easy for the author but appears fragmented to the reader, and it took a lot of effort for me to stay vigilant on the topics which jump around. Overall I found lots of interesting pieces here and there, though some parts reflect more of Nietzsche’s own prejudices than any of his interesting and useful insights into the world, and so the value of reading can vary widely depending on your intent and what you hope to get from the book.
On a discussion about truth, he questions the absolute value of truth: why is it so much more valuable than untruth? The philosophers of the past all put truth on a sky-high pedestal but Nietzsche says that this is dogmatic, and he notes that “we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions are the most indispensable to us”. Take the modern example of mutual funds: Munger has written in is Almanac about the inability of these funds to beat the index due to their trading costs as well as the pure unpredictability of the market, and yet to the mutual fund managers, they cannot depart with the untruth that they’re actually helping their clients instead of hurting them. They must believe in the untruth that they’re doing something in the world, and that they’re doing something purposeful and only they can do, because the alternative truth will get them fired and ostracized which would be, in cold and utilitarian terms, a colossal negative utility in their life. Given this, It helps to recognize the power of untruths and simply acknowledge untruth as untruth instead of something pejorative, or truth as truth instead of something so sublime. This discussion is a tangent on his theory of perspectivism which is just as provocative and at the same time practical.
% grep -i "beyond good and evil" quotes.txt19 matches
on mobs
“Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on equality
“‘Sympathy for all’ – would be harshness and tyranny for thee, my good neighbor!”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on mortality
“One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaä – blessing it rather than in love with it”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on pride
“Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye – and calls it his pride”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on grit
“The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – know ye not that it is only this discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on truth
“Supposing that Truth is a woman – what then? Is there no ground for suspecting that all philosophers, insofar as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women?”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on untruth
“We are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions are the most indispensable to us”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on truth and untruth
“The moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance is the worst proved supposition in the world. There could have been no life at all except upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on bias
“The greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on bias
“In the philosopher, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to who he is”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on thought and existence
“A thought comes when ‘it’ wishes, and not when ‘I’ wish; so that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicative ‘think’. ‘One’ thinks; but that this ‘one’ is precisely the famous old ‘ego’, which is only a supposition and assuredly not an ‘immediate certainty’”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on freedom
“It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on moralizers
“The wicked who are happy – a species about whom the moralists are silent”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on ethics
“Systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on reason
“Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for children and childish minds”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on human caprice
“We modern men, are determined by different moralities; our actions shine alternately in different colors, and are seldom unequivocal”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on strength
“Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on damnation
“Jesus had to invent hell to send thither those who would not love him”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
on history
“The ‘great men’ as they are reverenced, are poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values spurious coinage prevails”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil