(026) Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, One Paragraph at a Time
I’ve struggled immensely in all my attempts to read and comprehend Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”. These blog posts are my attempt to better understand this material. I encourage any corrections or criticisms in the comments.
Chapter Two: The Free Spirit
26. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority — where he may forget “men who are the rule,” as their exception; — exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense.
While every “select man” strives instinctively to create a space for himself that is free from the majority where he may forget about “men who are the rule”, he is still driven by the instinct to be a great discerner of truth, which forces him to confront “the rule”.
Whoever, in intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green and grey colours of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess, and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all this burden and disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it, and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is then certain: he was not made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For as such, he would one day have to say to himself: “The devil take my good taste! but ‘the rule’ is more interesting than the exception — than myself, the exception!” And he would go DOWN, and above all, he would go “inside.”
A man of truly elevated tastes must necessarily experience all facets of life including the ones that he would isolate himself from in his “citadel” of higher thought. To truly seek to know the human condition is to also seek the most base forms of being and face these distresses willingly.
As the self-proclaimed exception to the aforementioned “men who are the rule”, a man of truly elevated tastes must descend and enter into a true understanding of “the rule” because it is more interesting than the exception.
The long and serious study of the AVERAGE man — and consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one’s equals): — that constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every philosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing part. If he is fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task; I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace and “the rule” in themselves, and at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSES — sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill.
The high-minded philosopher who is devoted to the long and serious study of the average man may find this work disagreeable, odious, and disappointing. However, at certain times, he may cross paths with those who simply and cynically identify “the man who is the rule”, or the animal, in themselves. At times these self-aware, cynical commoners will share their wallowing, which Nietzsche describes with reference to defecation.
Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust — namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of his century — he was far profounder than Voltaire, and consequently also, a good deal more silent. It happens more frequently, as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape’s body, a fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no means rare, especially among doctors and moral physiologists.
Cynicism is the only form the exceptionally high-minded philosopher can use to draw knowledge of “the rule” out of the lower man. Abbe Galiani is the given example of where genius somehow combined with the “indiscreet billy-goat and ape”. Nietzsche paints the picture of a scientific head being placed on an ape’s body.
And whenever anyone speaks without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man as a belly with two requirements, and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks, and WANTS to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the real and only motives of human actions; in short, when any one speaks “badly” — and not even “ill” — of man, then ought the lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he ought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation. For the indignant man, and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case.
Nietzsche makes the case that the indignant man may indeed stand on higher and firmer moral ground than the ordinary, self-satisfied satyr. But the key difference between the who is that what is common across human beings, that is our baser instincts, is far more interesting than the musings of the high-minded, indignant man.
And no one is such a LIAR as the indignant man.
It’s in this final sentence that some of Nietzsche’s self-awareness shines through.
