(041) 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
41. One must subject oneself to one’s own tests that one is destined for independence and command, and do so at the right time. One must not avoid one’s tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge.
Nietzsche begins by explaining that it is crucial for anyone who intends to be an independent thought-leader to create mechanisms by which to check oneself. These are personal tests that one must not avoid and they are dangerous.
Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest — every person is a prison and also a recess.
Never become dependent on another person, as that dependency will certainly cause one to become at least partially imprisoned by the other person.
Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous — it is even less difficult to detach one’s heart from a victorious fatherland.
Never become dependent on one’s own nation. A needy and suffering nation, nor a proud and victorious nation.
Not to cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men, into whose peculiar torture and helplessness chance has given us an insight.
Never depend on pity, even if it comes in the form of higher men whose suffering and helplessness we have seen accidentally.
Not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one with the most valuable discoveries, apparently specially reserved for us.
Never depend on “any science”, even if it appears to give us a particular advantage.
Not to cleave to one’s own liberation, to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which always flies further aloft in order always to see more under it — the danger of the flier.
Do not depend on our own detachment, which seeks ever greater heights from which to see more of the world.
Nietzsche seems to be warning against the excessive heightening of one’s own ego in the pursuit of knowledge. Do you agree?
Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor become as a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our “hospitality” for instance, which is the danger of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally, almost indifferently with themselves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes a vice.
Do not cling to any of our special virtues, like hospitality, which can lead highly developed and wealthy souls to push themselves too far until their virtue becomes a vice and they begin to treat themselves poorly.
One must know how TO CONSERVE ONESELF — the best test of independence.
One must know how to remain concerned with themselves first and foremost, in order to remain independent.
