Ecce Homo
Walter Kaufmann Translation
Why I Write Such Good Books - 5
May I venture the surmise that I know women? That is part of my Dionysian dowry. Who knows? Perhaps I am the first psychologist of the eternally feminine. They all love me--an old story--not counting abortive females, the "emancipated" who lack the stuff for children.-- Fortunately, I am not willing to be torn to pieces: the perfect woman tears to pieces when she loves.-- I know these charming maenads.-- Ah, what a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of prey she is! And yet so agreeable!-- A little woman who pursues her revenge would run over fate itself.-- Woman is indescribably more evil than man; also cleverer: a good nature is in a woman a form of degeneration.-- In all so-called "beautiful souls" something is physiologically askew at bottom; I do not say everything, else I should become medi-cynical. The fight for equal rights is actually a symptom of a disease: every physician knows that.-- Woman, the more she is a woman, resists rights in general hand and foot: after all, the state of nature, the eternal war between the sexes, gives her by far the first rank.
Has my definition of love been heard? It is the only one worthy of a philosopher. Love--in its means, war; at bottom, the deadly hatred of the sexes.
Has my answer been heard to the question how one cures a woman--"redeems" her? One gives her a child. Woman needs children, a man is for her always only a means: thus spoke Zarathustra.
"Emancipation of women"--that is the instinctive hatred of the abortive woman, who is incapable of giving birth, against the woman who is turned out well--the fight against the "man" is always a mere means, pretext, tactic. By raising themselves higher, as "woman in herself," as the "higher woman," as a female "idealist," they want to lower the level of the general rank of woman; and there is no surer means for that than higher education, slacks, and political voting-cattle rights. At bottom, the emancipated are anarchists in the world of the "eternally feminine," the underprivileged whose most fundamental instinct is revenge.
One whole species of the most malignant "idealism"--which, incidentally, is also encountered among men; for example, in Henrik Ibsen, this typical old virgin--aims to poison the good conscience, what is natural in sexual love.
And lest I leave any doubt about my very decent and strict views in these matters, let me still cite a proposition against vice from my moral code: I use the word "vice" in my fight against every kind of anti-nature or, if you prefer pretty words, idealism. The proposition reads: "The preaching of chastity amounts to a public incitement against anti-nature. Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept 'impure,' is the crime par excellence against life--is the real sin against the holy spirit of life."
Walter Kaufmann Translation
Why I Write Such Good Books - 5
May I venture the surmise that I know women? That is part of my Dionysian dowry. Who knows? Perhaps I am the first psychologist of the eternally feminine. They all love me--an old story--not counting abortive females, the "emancipated" who lack the stuff for children.-- Fortunately, I am not willing to be torn to pieces: the perfect woman tears to pieces when she loves.-- I know these charming maenads.-- Ah, what a dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of prey she is! And yet so agreeable!-- A little woman who pursues her revenge would run over fate itself.-- Woman is indescribably more evil than man; also cleverer: a good nature is in a woman a form of degeneration.-- In all so-called "beautiful souls" something is physiologically askew at bottom; I do not say everything, else I should become medi-cynical. The fight for equal rights is actually a symptom of a disease: every physician knows that.-- Woman, the more she is a woman, resists rights in general hand and foot: after all, the state of nature, the eternal war between the sexes, gives her by far the first rank.
Has my definition of love been heard? It is the only one worthy of a philosopher. Love--in its means, war; at bottom, the deadly hatred of the sexes.
Has my answer been heard to the question how one cures a woman--"redeems" her? One gives her a child. Woman needs children, a man is for her always only a means: thus spoke Zarathustra.
"Emancipation of women"--that is the instinctive hatred of the abortive woman, who is incapable of giving birth, against the woman who is turned out well--the fight against the "man" is always a mere means, pretext, tactic. By raising themselves higher, as "woman in herself," as the "higher woman," as a female "idealist," they want to lower the level of the general rank of woman; and there is no surer means for that than higher education, slacks, and political voting-cattle rights. At bottom, the emancipated are anarchists in the world of the "eternally feminine," the underprivileged whose most fundamental instinct is revenge.
One whole species of the most malignant "idealism"--which, incidentally, is also encountered among men; for example, in Henrik Ibsen, this typical old virgin--aims to poison the good conscience, what is natural in sexual love.
And lest I leave any doubt about my very decent and strict views in these matters, let me still cite a proposition against vice from my moral code: I use the word "vice" in my fight against every kind of anti-nature or, if you prefer pretty words, idealism. The proposition reads: "The preaching of chastity amounts to a public incitement against anti-nature. Every kind of contempt for sex, every impurification of it by means of the concept 'impure,' is the crime par excellence against life--is the real sin against the holy spirit of life."
