(038) Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, One Paragraph at a Time
I’ve struggled 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
38. As happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern times with the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quite superfluous when judged close at hand, into which, however, the noble and visionary spectators of all Europe have interpreted from a distance their own indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately, UNTIL THE TEXT HAS DISAPPEARED UNDER THE INTERPRETATION), so a noble posterity might once more misunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps only thereby make ITS aspect endurable.
The French Revolution occurred at a time when the supposedly enlightened moral system was shifting across Europe. Even in the absence of a belief in God a strong sense of good and evil remained, which was used as justification for a terrible, gruesome farce.
The “noble posterity” might spent the decades and centuries after the French Revolution projecting a passionate “interpretation” of these historical events, but completely missing the underlying “text”.
— Or rather, has not this already happened? Have not we ourselves been — that “noble posterity”? And, in so far as we now comprehend this, is it not — thereby already past?
The postmodern art of tailoring historical interpretations to match our modern political and cultural agenda is something we’re always engaged in. Are we not hopeless to stop it from happening?
