(040) 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
40. Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the CONTRARY only be the right disguise for the shame of a God to go about in? A question worth asking! — it would be strange if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing.
Profundity and everything deep has a love of masks. The most delicate things are concealed, never to be found in mere image or parable. Wouldn’t a fitting disguise for the shame of God in our world be to present itself as antithesis? Nietzsche implies that it would be strange if “some mystic” had not already posed such a question.
There are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection.
Nietzsche speaks of delicate moments and experiences that ought to be overwhelmed and made unrecognizable. The observer of certain powerful actions of love and generosity should be thrashed with a stick to obscure his recollection.
Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask — there is so much goodness in craft.
Some people who, through inventive shame, can obscure and abuse their memories, thereby taking revenge on their secretive understanding. This shame is not necessarily caused by the worst things, but perhaps a reflection of ourselves having viewed great acts of love and generosity. Thus our craftiness and cunning is not the only thing hiding behind our mask.
I could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so.
Nietzsche imagines a clumsy, fat man who rolls through life with something costly and fragile to conceal to keep his shame in check.
This man has depths of shame that will force him to make delicate decisions in life that few others will experience or understand. He will choose to keep these things from view from everyone, including his closest friends and neighbors, including his mortal danger and regained mortal confidence.
This man has depths of shame that will force him to make delicate decisions in life that few others will experience or understand. He will choose to keep these things from view from everyone, including his closest friends and neighbors, including his mortal danger and regained mortal confidence.
Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there — and that it is well to be so.
This man’s every instinct will incline him to use his speech to prevent himself from having to share these sensitive things about himself. Instead of possessing a true understanding of him, the mask of this man will inhabit the hearts and minds of his friends. Even if he doesn’t desire this mask that he employs, he will someday discover that he nevertheless has constructed such a mask, and that that is a good thing.
Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more, around every profound spirit there continually grows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that is to say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation of every word he utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he manifests.
Every profound and deep spirit requires a mask that is constantly growing and evolving in reaction to the false and shallow interpretations of a man’s words, actions, and every sign of life.
What do you think Nietzsche is getting at here?
He seems to be identifying Carl Jung’s persona archetype.
