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Arius of Treve	Bits on Nietzsche, Norman and Gorean Philosophy		Lead	[-]
Posts: 522 08/17/01 21:07:39 Moderator	Tags : None A while back, a number of us began talking together about some of the parallels and differences between the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and that which John Norman presents through his Gorean novels. As we got deeper into this examiniation, some passages were placed on this board... basically presenting thoughts from Nietzsche and Norman for consideration by those reading here, and for reference in associated room discussions. Also, to perhaps encourage others to read beyond just the Gorean novels and expand their understanding of a variety of ideas. While serving its initial purpose, we decided to reorganize the thread itself, reposting what was already introduced and expanding the material presented in a manner better serving those interested. The thread that follows is the result of this reorganization and ongoing development. The juxtaposition of these passages is done with the intention of encouraging those reading here to think more deeply on the thoughts they contain. The hope is that in doing so, a deeper understanding of the themes suggested will be attained through comparing and contrasting the ideas presented. In reading these passages, it should be remembered that what is shown here are only excerpts from greater works. The attempt is made to retain the integrity of each author's ideas, but limitations are caused in response to what is practical and feasible in a place such as this. In all circumstances, accurate citation is given, and readers are encouraged to seek out the respective texts to further examine issues of particular interest. Exposure to possibilites is a further step towards seeking greater understanding. - Arius "[Nietzsche's] famous instruction 'Become who you are' has been read as an 'existential imperative,' and it has been read as a mode of discovery and reinterpretation. The dominant expression in Nietzsche gives - at least in Genealogy - is that one can do very little to change one's basic being, much less to 'improve mankind.' In particular, whether one is strong and noble or weak and pathetic is not a choice of existential options but a kind of 'given,' in terms of one's social origins and upbringing, and resides at the core of one's character, perhaps even in one's genes. As he puts it in Genealogy, an eagle can no more become a lamb than a lamb can become an eagle. But it is clear to whom Nietzsche is addressing his supposedly neutral descriptions: not to the lambs but to the readers who identify with the 'master' - type and suffer from 'bad conscience.' For them, reading Nietzsche can be a liberating experience." "Eagles and Lambs: Metaphors of Strength and Weakness" From - What Nietzsche Really Said Pg. 123-124 - Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins
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Arius of Treve	Why So Hard?	#1	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 08/17/01 21:24:12 Moderator	"Many Earth moralities encourage resignation and accommodation; Gorean morality is bent more toward conquest and defiance; many Earth moralities encourage tenderness, pity and gentleness, sweetness; Gorean morality encourages honor, courage, hardness and strength. To Gorean morality many Earth moralities might ask, 'Why so hard?' To these Earth moralities, the Gorean ethos might ask, 'Why so soft?'" - MARAUDERS OF GOR, Pg. 8 [29] "'Why so hard?' the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. 'After all, are we not close kin?' Why so soft? O, my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers? Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes? And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me. And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut and cut through, how can you one day create with me? For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on bronze-harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard. This new table, O my bothers, I place over you: become hard!" On Old and New Tablets From - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Part III - Fredrich Nietzsche Hardness - "Nietzsche's insistence on 'hardness' is typically misunderstood - usually as being part of his dubious campaign against compassion and pity. But Nietzsche put a strong emphasis on self-discipline. Nietzsche's conception of hardness involves unswerving commitment to one's task, 'Why so soft, so pliant and yielding?' Nietzsche's Zarathustra asks his disciples. 'Why is there so much denial, self-denial in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?... All creators are hard... Only the noblest is altogether hard. This new tablet... I place over you: become hard!" "Nietzsche's Virtues" From - What Nietzsche Really Said Pg. 189 - Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins
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Arius of Treve	On Pity	#2	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 08/17/01 21:40:03 Moderator	"At such a time a man may not be spoken to, for according to the Gorean way of thinking pity humiliates both he who pities and he who is pitied. According to the Gorean way, one may love but one may not pity." - OUTLAW OF GOR, Pg. 31 "According to Nietzsche, pity is bad for both those who feel it and for those who are being pitied. It is bad for the pitied because it does not help them toward happiness and perfection and well-being. It even degrades, for pity includes a measure of condescension and sometimes even contempt. We do not pity those we admire. Moreover, the pitying one rarely understands the 'whole inner sequence' and the 'entire economy of the soul': 'he wants to help and does not realize that there is a personal necessity of suffering.' Self perfection is possible only through suffering, and the ultimate happiness of the man who has overcome himself does not exclude suffering." Part IV: Synopsis, Pg. 368 From - Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist - Walter Kaufmann [368] Pity "a squandering of feeling, a parasite harmful to moral health, 'it cannot possibly be our duty to increase the evil in the world.' If one does good merely out of pity, it is oneself one really does good to, and not the other. Pity does not depend upon maxims but upon affects; it is pathological. The suffering of others infects us, pity is an infection." Disparagement of the So-Called Evil Qualities Book Two: Critique of Highest Values From - The Will To Power - Friedrich Nietzsche [135] Being Pitied - "To savages the idea of being pitied evokes a moral shudder: it divests one of all virtue. To offer pity is as good as to offer contempt: one does not want to see a comtempible creature suffer, there is no enjoyment in that. To see an enemy suffer, on the other hand, whom one recognizes as one's equal in pride and who does not relinquish his pride under torture, and in general any creature who refuses to cry out for pity - cry out, that is, for the most shameful and profoundest humiliation - this is an enjoyment of enjoyments, and behoding it the soul of the savage is elevated to admiration: in the end he kills such a valliant creature, if he has him in his power, and thus accords this indomitable enemy his last honor: if he had wept and wailed and the expression of cold defiance had vanished from his face, if he had shown himself contemptible - well, he would have been let live, like a dog - he would not longer have excited the pride of the spectator of his suffering, and admiration would have given place to pity." Book II From - Daybreak - Friedrich Nietzsche "When the great man screams, the small man comes running with his tongue hanging from lasviciousness. But he calls it 'pity.'" The Convalescent - Part II From - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Part III - Friedrich Nietzsche Begging "Goreans do not generally favor begging, and some regard it as an insult that there should be such, an insult to them and their city." - ASSASSIN OF GOR, Pg. 11 [185] Beggers - "Beggers ought to be abolished: for one is vexed at giving to them and vexed at not giving to them." Book II From - Daybreak - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Arius of Treve	Master Morality and Slave Morality	#3	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 08/17/01 22:05:43 Moderator	"The morality of Earth, from the Gorean point of view, is a morality which would be viewed as more appropriate to slaves than free men. It would be seen in terms of the envy and resentment of inferiors for their superiors. It lays great stress on equalities and being humble and being pleasant and avoiding friction and being ingratiating and small. It is a morality in the best interest of slaves, who would be only too eager to be regarded as the equals of others. We are all the same. That is the hope of slaves; that is what it is in their interest to convince others of. The Gorean morality on the other hand is more one of inequalities, based on the assumption that individuals are not the same, but quite different in many ways. It might be said to be, though this is oversimple, a morality of masters. Guilt is almost unknown in Gorean morality, though shame and anger are not." - MARAUDERS OF GOR, Pg. 8 "The morality of slaves says, "You are equal to me; we are both the same"; the morality of masters says, "We are not equal; we are not the same; become equal to me; then we will be the same." The morality of slaves reduces all to bondage; the morality of masters encourages all to attain, if they can, the heights of freedom. I know of no prouder, more self-reliant, more magnificent creature than the free Gorean, male or female; they are often touchy, and viciously tempered, but they are seldom petty or small; moreover they do not hate and fear their bodies or their instincts; when they restrain themselves it is a victory over titanic forces; not the consequence of a slow metabolism; but sometimes they do not restrain themselves; they do not assume that their instincts and blood are enemies and spies, saboteurs in the note of themselves; they know them and welcome them as part of their persons; they are as little suspicious of them as the cat of its cruelty, or the lion of its hunger; their desire for vengeance, their will to speak out and defend themselves, their lust, they regard as intrinsically and gloriously a portion of themselves as their hearing or their thinking." - MARAUDERS OF GOR, Pg. 8-9 "Many Earth moralities make people little; the object of Gorean morality, for all its faults, is to make people free and great. These objectives are quite different it is clear to see. Accordingly, one would expect that the implementing moralities would, also, be considerably different." - MARAUDERS OF GOR, Pg. 9 * * * "In contrast with the morality of the ancient Athenians, a morality of heroism and mastery, Christian morality has made the bland, mediocre person the moral exemplar. Worst of all, the Christian moral vision emphasizes abstaining from such 'selfish' concerns. The person who does essentially nothing with his or her life but has avoided 'sin' might merit heaven, on the Christian view, while a creative person may be deemed 'immoral' for refusing to follow 'the herd.' This, Nietzsche protests, is backward, and it will lead (and has led) to the downfall of the human race. According to Nietzsche, many if not most of the prohibitions of Judeo-Christan (and Kantian) ethics are 'leveling' devices that favor the weak and mediocre and put more talented and strong spirits at a disadvantage. Accordingly, Nietzsche defends a view 'beyond good and evil,' beyond our tendencies to pass moralistic judgments on our own and other's behavior, toward a more creative psychological and naturalistic perspective." Between Science and Religion: Modern Philosophy and the Enlightenment From - A Short History of Philosophy Pg. 234 - Robert Solomon & Kathleen Higgins Slave Morality vs Master Morality "Nietzsche pointed out that two moral systems have been apparent throughout history - that of enslaved peoples and that of the elite who have traditionally ruled - and that each system has had its own moral code. The slave morality of the weak requires them to accept subjugation and obedience to the master race. The master morality consists of the ethics of the aristocratic class (rulers and noblemen), dedicated to combat, adventure, victory. For these men, peace comes only with the conquest of their opponents who must then acknowledge the natural right of the strong to rule the weak. The principle that might makes right, said Nietzsche, is the verdict of nature, in contrast to civilization (Christian and Jewish that is) which has opposed this ethic with one of humility and compassion. The traditional Judeo-Christian culture is appropriate, Nietzsche insisted, only for slaves. Nietzsche accused Judeo-Christian religious leaders of using religion as a means of turning natural moral values upside down, so that the masters became the slaves, and the slaves became the masters. The slaves, said he, became priests representing the omnipotent God and threatened their masters with divine punishment unless they, the masters, accepted a humble, servile role as obedient servants of the slaves. Nietzsche called for a revaluation of all values." Naturalistic Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche From - Ideas of the Great Philosophers Pg. 50 - William Sahakian and Mabel Sahakian
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Arius of Treve	A Clarification	#4	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 08/17/01 22:20:42 Moderator	Master Morality and Slave Morality The title of this post is a subject often discussed in relation to Gorean philosophy. It is mentioned by name in the beginning of Maruaders of Gor, during a long bout of introspection done by Tarl. The basic concept itself comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, as has been shown in this thread. Norman develops this idea as a central theme within Gorean philosophy and contrasts Gor and Earth through it. But what is meant by the idea itself? First off... what is not meant is "morality" within a Master/slave relationship. The topic itself is not addressing Masters and slaves from the viewpoint of consensual relationship slavery, BDSM, legalized slavery, or any other notions what commonly come to mind when hearing those terms Online. It has little to do with these things and should not be confused as some sort of morality system to be followed by Gorean slave girls or indicative of them. The "Morality of the Master" is supported and promoted by Gorean philosophy, while the "Morality of the Slave" is refuted. What is being addressed by these terms is the seeming moral systems of various societies. Nietzsche choose the specific titles because in his eyes they were reflective of each particular system. The "Morality of the Slave" is a moral system of ressentiment and self-denial - "Thou shalt not's" - currently depicted by our present day society... civilization based upon Judeo-Christian (Kantian) ethics. But not just present day society... basically society as based upon these ethical systems for as long as they have existed and dominated thought (returning to western society of 200 years ago is not the embracing of an age more in tune with Gorean philosophy). The "Morality of the Master" is a moral system of personal excellence and affirmation - "Become who you are" - seen by Nietzsche as being epitomized by the Heroic Age of the Greeks and portrayed by Norman as being the ideal of Gorean society (ideal, not always reality, for the whole of any society - its people - will never be all fitting to the ideal. In the case of the Gorean novels, Norman uses examples clearly contrasted with the ideal of Gorean philosophy as a tool to makes statements not only of what should be, but what should not). - Arius
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Arius of Treve	The Herd - "Let us all be weak, for I am weak."	#5	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 08/17/01 22:57:32 Moderator	"'Surely, someday on Earth, said the man, 'the males will dare to be men?' 'I do not think so,' I said, 'save for rare individuals. The process of teaching, unconscious, subtle, pervasive, is too effective. It is not unusual for a woman to fear her womanhood; what is less generally recognized is that many men fear their own manhood; they conceal their blood; they pretend it does not exist; it is even dangerous, in such a society, to suggest that men consider honesty in such matters, to suggest that they dare to be men, to suggest that they might, if they wished, tear away their own chains. The weakest, the most trapped among them, are often the first, with hysteria, knowing they themselves are not strong enough to take their rightful freedoms, and envying others they fear might have the strength, to denounce such modest suggestions.' 'The weak,' said the man, 'are always those who fear the strong.' 'They fear, not strangely, a world in which not everyone is like themselves.' 'Let us all be weak, for I am weak,' smiled the man. 'Yes,' I said." - TRIBESMAN OF GOR, Pg. 75-76 "[The morality of Earth] lays great stress on equalities and being humble and being pleasant and avoiding friction and being ingratiating and small.... The Gorean morality on the other hand is more one of inequalities, based on the assumption that individuals are not the same, but quite different in many ways." - MARAUDERS OF GOR, Pg. 8 [861] "A declaration of war on the masses by higher men is needed! Everywhere the mediocre are combining in order to make themselves master! Everything that makes soft and effeminate, that serves the ends of the 'people' or the 'feminine,' works in favor of suffrage universel, ie., the dominion of inferior men. But we should take reprisal and bring this whole affair to light and to the bar of judgment." Part One - The Doctrine of Order of Rank Book Four: Discipline and Breeding From - The Will to Power - Friedrich Nietzsche [280] "The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself; the mode and manner in which it finds itself. It is therefore an opponent of all orders of rank, it sees an ascent from beneath to above as a descent from the majority to the minority. The herd feels the exception, whether it be below or above it, as something opposed and harmful to it. Fear ceases in the middle: here one is never alone; here one's own form of being is not felt as a reproach but as the right form of being; here contentment rules. Mistrust is felt towards the exceptions; to be an exception is experienced as guilt." Part Two - The Herd Book Two: Critique of Highest Values From - The Will to Power - Friedrich Nietzsche "We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more distasteful to me than their falseness and their loaded dice. And when I lived with them, I lived above them. That is why they developed a grudge against me. They did not want to hear how someone was living over their heads; and so they put wood and earth and filth between me and their heads. Thus they muffled the sound of my steps: and so far I have beeen heard least well by the most scholarly. Between themselves and me they laid all human faults and weaknesses: 'false ceilings' they call them in their houses. And yet I live over their heads with my thoughts; and even if I wanted to walk upon my own mistakes, I would still be over their heads. For men are not equal: thus speaks justice. And what I want, they should have no right to want!" On Scholars From - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Part II - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Arius of Treve	On Guilt	#6	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 08/17/01 23:22:03 Moderator	"One thing seems clear to me, that a morality which produces guilt and self-torture, which results in anxiety and agony, which shortens life spans, cannot be the answer." - MARAUDERS OF GOR, Pg. 7 "Guilt is almost unknown in Gorean morality, though shame and anger are not." - MARAUDERS OF GOR, Pg. 8 [250] "Guilt - Although the most acute judges of the witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was nonexistant. It is thus with all guilt." From - The Gay Science - Friedrich Nietzsche "They punish you for all your virtues. They forgive you entirely - your mistakes. Because you are gentle and just in disposition you say, 'They are guiltless in their small existence.' But their petty souls think, 'Guilt is every great existence.'" On the Flies of the Market Place From - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Part I - Friedrich Nietzsche "Man is the cruelest animal against himself; and whenever he calls himself 'sinner' and 'cross-bearer' and 'penitent,' do not fail to hear the voluptuous delight that is in all such lamentation and accusation." The Convalescent - Part II From - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Part III - Friedrich Nietzsche "Bad Conscience" - Nietzsche often refers to "guilt" and "sin" as associated concepts of "bad conscience." "I regard bad conscience as the serious illness which man was bound to contract under the stress of the most fundamental chance he had ever experienced - that chance which occured when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and of peace.... All instincts which do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inwards -- this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his 'soul.' The inner world.... acquired depth, breadth, height, in the same measure as outward discharge was hindered. These fearful bulwarks with which the social organization protected itself against the old instincts of freedom.... brought it about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man turned backwards against man himself. Enmity, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in change, in destruction -- all this turned against the possessors of such instincts: that is the origin of the 'bad conscience.'" "Guilt," "Bad Conscience" and the Like From - Genealogy of Morals - Part II - Friedrich Nietzsche David B. Allison has done a lengthy examination of this particular subject, and Genealogy of Morals itself, in his "Reading the New Nietzsche."
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Arius of Treve	From - "Beyond Good and Evil"	#7	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 10/16/01 08:59:54 Moderator	[260] "Wandering through the many subtler and coarser moralities which have so far been prevalent on earth, or still are prevalent, I found certain features recurred regularly together, and were closely associated -- until I finally discovered two basic types and one basic difference. There are master-morality and slave-morality -- I add immediately that in all the higher and more mixed cultures there are also appear attempts at mediation between these two moralities; and yet more often the interpenetration and mutual misunderstanding of both, and at times, they occur directly alongside each other -- even in the same human being, within a single soul. The moral discrimination of values has originated either among a ruling group whose consciousness of its difference from the ruled group was accompanied by delight - or among the ruled, the slaves and dependents of every degree. In the first case, when the ruling group determines what is 'good,' the exalted, proud states of the soul are experienced as conferring distinction and determining the order of rank. The noble human being separates from himself those in whom the opposite of such exalted, proud states finds expression: he despises them. It should be noted immediately that in this first type of morality the opposition of 'good' and 'bad' means approximately the same as 'noble' and 'contemptible.' (The opposition of 'good' and 'evil' has a different origin.) One feels contempt for the cowardly, the anxious, the petty, those intent on narrow utility; also for the suspicious with their unfree glances, those who humble themselves, the doglike people who allow themselves to be maltreated, the begging flatterers, above all the liars: it is part of the fundamental faith of all aristocrats that the common people lie. 'We truthful ones' - thus the nobility of ancient Greece referred to itself. It is obvious that moral designations were everywhere first applied to human beings and only later, derivatively, to actions. Therefore it is a gross mistake when historians of morality start from such questions as: why was the compassionate act praised? The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, 'what is harmful to me is harmful in itself'; it knows itself to be that which first accords honor to things; it is value-creating. Everything it knows as part of itself it honors: such as morality is self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of fullness, of power that seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of wealth that would give and bestow: the noble human being, too, helps the unfortunate, but not, or almost not, from pity, but prompted more by an urge begotten by excess of power. The noble human being honors himself as one who is powerful, also as one who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and be silent, who delights in being severe and hard with himself and respects all severity and hardness. 'A hard heart Wotan put into my breast,' says an old Scandinavian saga: a fitting poetic expression, seeing that it comes from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is actually proud of the fact that he is not made for pity, and the hero of the saga therefore adds as a warning: 'If the heart is not hear in youth it will never harden.' Noble and courageous human beings who think that way are furthest removed from that morality which finds distinction of morality precisely in pity, or in acting for others, or in desinteressement; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a findamental hostility and irony against 'selflessness' belong just as definitely to noble morality as does a slight disdain and caution regarding compassionate feelings and a ''warm heart.' It is the powerful who understand how to honor; this is their art, their realm of invention. The profound reverence for age and tradition - all law rests on this double reverence - the faith and prejudice in favor of ancestors and disfavor of those yet to come are typical of the morality of the powerful; and when the men of 'modern ideas,' conversely, believe almost instinctively in 'progress' and 'the future' and more and more lack respect for age, this in itself would sufficiently betray the ignoble origin of these 'ideas.' A morality of the ruling group, however, is most alien and embarassing to the present taste in the severity of its principle and that one has duties to one's peers; that against beings of a lower rank, against everything alien, one may behave as one pleases or 'as the heart desires,' and in any case 'beyond good and evil' - here pity and like feelings may find their place. The capacity for, and the duty of, long gratitude and long revenge - both only among one's peers - refinement in repaying, the sophisticated concept of friendship, a certain necessity for having enemies (as it were, as drainage ditches for the affects of envy, quarrelsomeness, exuberance - at bottom, in order to be capable of being good friends): all these are typical characteristics of noble morality which, as suggested, is not the morality of 'modern ideas' and therefore is hard to empathize with today, also hard to dig up and uncover. It is different with the second type of morality, slave morality. Suppose the violated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, who are uncertain of themselves and weary, moralize: what will their moral valuations have in common? Probably pessimistic suspicion about the whole condition of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man along with his condition. The slave's eye is not favorable to the virtues of the powerful: he is skeptical and suspicious, subtly suspicious, of all the 'good' that is honored there - he would like to persuade himself that even their happiness is not genuine. Conversely, those qualities are brought out and flooded with light which serve to ease existence for those who suffer: here pity, the complaisant and obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility, and friendliness are honored - for here these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence. Slave morality is essentially and morality of utility. Here is the place for the origing of that famous opposition of 'good' and 'evil': into evil one's feelings project power and dangerousness, a certain terribleness, subtlety, and strength that does not permit contempt to develop. According to slave morality, those who are 'evil' thus inspire fear; according to master morality it is precisely these who are "good' that inspire, and wish to inspire, fear, while the 'bad' are felt to be contemptible. The opposition reaches its climax when, as a logical consequence of slave morality, a touch of disdain is associated also with the 'good' of this morality - this may be slight and benevolent - because the good human being has to be undangerous in the slaves' way of thinking: he is good-natured, easy to deceive, a little stupid perhaps, un bonhomme. Wherever slave morality becomes preponderant, language tends to bring the words 'good' and 'stupid' closer together." Part Nine - What is Noble From - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Arius of Treve	Condemnation of Herd Morality	#8	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 10/16/01 09:04:37 Moderator	"What Nietzsche sometimes condemns as 'herd morality' he also describes as 'slave morality,' a morality fit for slaves and servants. Although there are strong suggestions of this view in some of Nietzsche's earlier works (Daybreak and Human, All Too Human), it is first fully stated in Beyond Good and Evil, and later more thoroughly worked out in On the Genealogy of Morals. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche boldly announces that 'wandering through the many subtler and coarser moralities which have so far been prevalent on earth . . . I finally discovered two basic types, . . . master and slave morality.' He immediately adds that these two usually intermingle and function together in all sorts of complex ways, and that they even coexist 'within a single soul.' This simple dichotomy belies Nietzsche's own insistence on subtlety and complexity, to be sure, but in the Genealogy he makes it quite clear that what he is giving us is a 'polemic,' an oversimplified but brutally thought-provoking way of looking at morality. Morality, in the singular sense presented in the Bible and defended by Kant, is slave morality. In its most crude form it consists of general principles imposed from above (by the rulers or by God) that yoke and constrain the individual. In its subtler and more sophisticated forms, that external authority is relocated internally - in the faculty of reason, for example. But what is most characteristic of Morality in either its crude or its sophisticated forms is that it is mainly prohibitive and constraining rather than inspiring. Kant may have been 'awed' by 'the Moral Law within,' but the Categorical Imperative itself, as he spells it out in several general formulas, consists mainly of implicit 'Thou shalt nots' ('Only act such that you would have others in the same circumstances act in the same way,' 'always treat people as ends and never as means only') The ultimate test of a maxim, according to Kant, is whether when universalized it is something that logically cannot be done. Nietzsche, of course, thinks that universalization is utterly irrelevant to virtue. Indeed, insofar as it can be universalized (or even generally described!) a virtue is diminished or destroyed. Master morality, by contrast, is an ethics of virtue, an ethics in which personal excellence is primary. But personal excellence is not to be contrasted with (or set in opposition to) personal happiness, as obligation so often is. Achieving excellence is precisely what makes one happy, according to both Nietzsche and Aristotle. To grudgingly fulfill one's obligations, at some cost to one's own goals and satisfaction, makes one unhappy. (Righteousness is a poor substitute for happiness.) The 'master' takes as his or her morality (in the anthropological sense) just those values, ideals, and practices that are personally preferable and suitable. The 'master' is epitomized neither by the overly genteel Aristotelian gentleman nor by the overly brutal Homeric heroes but by the very civilized yet still sufficiently Dionysian Greeks of the Golden Age. Master morality takes as its watchword "Become who you are,' and whether or not one turns out to be like anyone else, or even whether or not one is acceptable to others, are matters of no concern. It is the masters. Nietzsche tells us, who establish the meaning of 'good.' The masters use this term to refer to what they see as admirable, desirable, satisfying, and, in fact, to refer to themselves. (The bombastic Roman general in the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum sings out proudly, 'I am my own ideal!') They thus recognize the distinctions between what is good and what is bad, but the latter refers only to deficiencies of the good, what is frustrating or debilitating, to failure, or inadequacy, to what is other than themselves, their tastes, their virtues, and to others who fail or fall behind. No principles, rulers, or gods are necessary to make the distinction, which arises from the ideals and desires of the masters themselves. Putting it simply, one might summarize master morality as 'being myself, and getting what I want,' with the understanding that what one is and what one wants may be quite refined and noble. (To interpret 'getting what I want' as an expression of selfishness reflects an impoverishment of desire, a sure sign of slave morality.) Not getting what one wants is bad, not necessarily in any larger sense (such as causing disastrous consequences for the community, or violating God's laws and inviting divine retribution) but simply because it falls short of one's own aspirations and ideals. For the slaves, by contrast, getting what one wants is just too difficult, too unlikely, too implausible. Slaves do not like themselves, so the idea of becoming who you are is not particularly appealing. Slaves ultimately do not value getting what one wants but, in a perverse yet readily comprehensible sense, not getting what one wants. Their virtue lies not in being themselves but in not being the other, the master, the privileged, the oppressor. The masters see the slaves as pathetic, as miserable, as unhappy, both because they don't get what they want and because what they want is often so petty. But the slaves do not see themselves that way. They see themselves as deprived. They see themselves as oppressed. They see themselves, in modern terms, as victims. Nor do they see the masters as merely happy and fulfilled. The slaves see them as oppressors, as people with the wrong values, the wrong ideals, the wrong ideas about living. Thus, in the long history of Morality there came about a most remarkable 'revaluation of values,' according to Nietzsche. First the ancient Hebrews, then the early Christians, turned master morality on its head, declaring that the very values and ideals that masters took to be the heart of their ethics were in fact offensive, first to God, then secondarily to God's righteous believers. Getting what you want, rather than being the standard of ethics, is the root of all evil. In slave morality, the simple distinction between good and bad gets replaced by the metaphysical distinction between good and evil. The masters' distinction between good and bad simply refers to getting versus not getting what one wants, fulfilling versus not fulfilling one's aspirations. The slaves' distinction between good and evil refers, instead, to external and 'objective' standards, God's will and principles of reason. Nietzsche sees in this reformulation of values an 'act of . . . spiritual revenge' -- 'The wretched alone are the good; the suffering, depraved, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God . . . and you, the powerful and noble, are, on the contrary, the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity, and you shall be in all eternity unblessed, the accursed, and damned!' -- It is in contrast to the sometimes bloated pretensions of philosophy, theology, and metaphysical dogma that simple appeals to motives and emotion gain their force. In attacking Christianity and Judeo-Christian morality, Nietzsche does not remain on the same level of esoteric abstraction as his religious and moral antagonists. What he does instead is to dig under them. What could be more effective against the self-righteous pronouncements of some philosophers and theologians than an ad hominem argument that undermines their credibility, that reduces their rationality and piety to petty personal envy or indignation? What could be more humiliating for a morality that incessantly preaches against selfishness and self-interest than the accusation that it is in fact not only the product of impotent self-interest but hypocritical as well? And what could be a more effective argument against theism than ridiculing the psychosociological ground out of which such a belief has arisen? Such humiliation is Nietzsche's objective in his psychological guerrilla war against Christianity and Judeo-Christian bourgeois Morality. Nietzsche wants to shock us. He wants to offend us. He wants us to see through the rationalized surface of traditional Morality to its historical genealogy, the actual human beings who lie behind it. Like Hegel, his great misunderstood predecessor, he holds that one can truly understand a phenomenon only when one understands its origins, its development, and its overall place in human consciousness. But understanding a phenomenon, in this sense, does not always lead to further appreciation. Nietzsche contends that what we call 'Morality' originated among actual slaves, the miserable Lumpenproletariat of the ancient world (a term introduced by Marx to denote the lowest classes of society). Morality continues to be motivated by the servile and resentful emotions of those who are 'poor in spirit' and feel themselves inferior. 'Morality,' however brilliantly rationalized by Immanuel Kant as the dictates of Practical Reason or by the utilitarian philosophers as 'the greatest good for the greatest number,' is, according to Nietzsche, essentially the devious strategy of the weak to gain some advantage (or at least minimize their disadvantage) vis-a-vis the strong. What we call Morality, even if it includes (indeed emphasizes) the sanctity of life, displays palpable disgust for life, a 'weariness' with life, an 'otherworldly' longing that prefers some other, idealized existence to this one. To describe this, of course, is not to 'refute' the claims of Morality. Morality might still be, as Kant argued, the product of Practical Reason and such a matter of universalized principles. Nietzsche concedes that it may in fact be conducive to the greatest good for the greatest number, the public good. But to recognize that such obsessions with rational principles and general welfare are products and symptoms of an underlying sense of inferiority is certainly to take the glamour and the seeming 'necessity' out of Morality. The great moral philosophers have given us visions of the perfect society (Plato), portraits of the happy, virtuous life (Aristotle), formal analysis of Morality (Kant), and impassioned defenses of the principles of utility and equality (Mill). Nietzsche, by contrast, offers us a diagnosis, in which morals emerge as something mean-spirited and pathetic. The basis of slave morality, he tells us, is resentment, a bitter emotion based on a sense of inferiority and frustrated vindictiveness. It is a thoroughly reactive emotion, provoked by the successes of others. The contrast between slave morality and master morality ultimately comes down to this emotional difference: that the slave nurtures resentment until it 'poisons' him, while the master, noble and self-secure, expresses his feelings and frustrations. Although Nietzsche sometimes writes like an anthropologist, describing two alternative 'perspectives' on life, his continuous condemnation of resentment leaves little doubt as to which of the two 'moral types' he finds preferable. Nietzsche's 'genealogy' of morals is designed to make the novice reader uncomfortable with his or her own slavish attitudes, but it is also written to inspire a seductive sense of superiority, the urge to become a 'master.' These are dangerous attitudes, however, quite opposed to the edifying moral 'uplift' we usually expect from ethical treatises. Nietzsche's 'genealogy' is, in fact, only partially a genealogy; it is much more a psychological diagnosis. It does not include a very condensed and rather mythic account of the history and evolution of morals, but the heart of his account is a psychological hypothesis concerning the motives and mechanisms underlying that history and evolution. 'The slave revolt of morality begins,' Nietzsche tells us in Genealogy, 'when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values.' Modern critics might well dismiss such speculation as yet another version of the 'genetic fallacy.' (That is, the question is not the genesis or the motivation of morals but rather the validity of our moral principles.) But even Kant himself insisted that one cannot evaluate the 'moral worth' of an action without considering its intentions. An action performed out of noble sentiments is noble, even if the act itself is rather small and inconsequential. An action expressing vicious sentiments is vicious, even if the act itself turns out to have benign consequences. At least in part, ethics is made up of what one might generically call 'feelings' - or, better, what Kant called the 'inclinations' - which would include not only respect, a sense of duty, and the sweet (but suspicious) sentiments of sympathy and compassion, but also the nasty negative emotions of envy, anger, hatred, vengeance, and, especially, resentment." Master and Slave Morality From - What Nietzsche Really Said Pg. 108-115 - Robert Solomon & Kathleen Higgins
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dahra	On The Pitying	#9	[url]	[-]
Posts: 268 10/16/01 12:18:48	On The Pitying My friends, a gibe was related to your friend: "Look at Zarathustra! Does he not walk among us as if we were animals?" But it were better said: He who has knowledge walks among men as animals." To him who has knowledge, man himself is "the animal with red cheeks." How did this come about? Is it not because man has had to be ashamed too often? O my friends! Thus speaks he who has knowledge: shame, shame, shame--that is the history of man. And that is why he who is noble bids himself not to shame: shame he imposes on himself before all who suffer. Verily, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are lacking too much in shame. If I must pity, at least i do not want it known; and if i do pity, it is preferable from a distance. I should also like to shroud my face and flee before i am recognized; and thus i bid you do, my friends. Would that my destiny led those like you, who do not suffer, accross my way, and those whom i may share hope and meal and honey. Verily, I may have done this and that for sufferers; but always I seemd to have done better when I learned to feel better joys. As long as there have been men, man has felt too little joy: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin. And learning better to feel joy, we learn best not to hurt others or to plan hurts for them. Therefore I wash my hand when it has helped the sufferer; therefore I wipe even my soul. Having seen the sufferer suffer, I was ashamed for the sake of his shame; and when i helped him, I transgressed grievously against his pride. Great indebttedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm. "Be reserved in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!" Thus I advise those who have nothing to give. But i am the giver of gifts: I like to give, as a friend to friends. Strangers however, and the poor may themselves pluck fruit from my tree: that will cause them less shame. But beggars should be abolished entirely! Verily, it is annoying to give to them and it is annoying not to give to them. And also sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the bite of conscience teaches men to bite. Worst of all, however, are petty thoughts. Verily, even evil deeds are better than petty thoughts. To be sure you say: The pleasure in a lot of petty nastiness saves us from many a big evil deed." But here one should not wish to save. An evil deed is like a boil: it itches and irritates and breaks open--it speaks honestly. "Behold, I am disease" -- Thus speaks the evil deed; that is its honesty. But a petty thought is like a fungus: it creeps and stoops and does not want to be anywhere--until the whole body is rotten and withered with little fungi. But to him who is possessed by the devil I whisper this word: "Better for you to rear up your devil! Even for you there is still a way to greatness!" My brothers, one knows a little too much about everybody. And can even see through some men and yet we can by no means pass through them. It is difficult to live with people because it is so difficult to be silent. And not against him who is repugnant to us are we most unfair, but against him who is no concern of ours. But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting place for his suffering, but a hard bed as it were, a field cot: thus will you profit him best. And if a friend does you evil, then say "I forgive you what you did to me; but that you have done it to yourself--how could i forgive that?" Thus speaks all great love: it overcomes even forgiveness and pity. One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon looses control of his head too. Alas, where in the world has there been more folly than among the pitying? Woe to all who love without having a height that is above their pity! Thus spoke the devil to me once: "God too has his hell: that is his love of man." And most recently I heard him say this: "God is dead; God died of his pity for man." Thus be warned of pity: from there a heavy cloud will yet come to man. Verily, I understand weather signs. But mark this too: all great love is even above all its pity; for it still wants to create the beloved. "Myself I sacrifice to my love, and my neighbor as myself" --thus runs the speech of all creatos. But all creators are hard. Thus spoke Zarathustra Thus Spoke Zarathustra Part II Friedrich Nietzsche
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dahra	On The Friend	#10	[url]	[-]
Posts: 268 10/16/01 12:39:08	On The Friend "There is always one too many around me" - thus thinks the hermit. "Always one times one-eventually that makes two." I and me are always too deep in conversation: how could one stand if there were no friend? For the hermit the friend is always the third person: the third is the cork that prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depths. Alas, there are too many depths for all hermits; therefore they long so for a friend and his height. Our faith in others betrays in what respect we would like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often love is only a device to overcome envy. And often one attacks and makes and enemy in order to conceal that one is open to attack. "At least be my enemy"-thus speaks true reverence, which does not dare ask for friendship. If one wants to have a friend one must also want to wage war for him: and to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy. In a friend one should still honor the enemy. Can you go close to your friend without going over to him? In a friend one should have one's best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him. You do not want to put on anything for your friend? Should it be an honor for your friend that you give yourself to him as you are? But he sends you to the devil for that. He who makes no secret of himself, enrages: so much reason have you for fearing nakedness. Indeed, if you were gods, then you might be ashamed of your clothes. You cannot groom yourself too beautifully for your friend: for you shall be to him as an arrow and a longing for the overman. Have you ever seen your friend asleep - and found out how he looks? What is the face of your friend anyway? It is your own face in a rough and imperfect mirror. Have you ever seen your friend asslep? Were you not shocked that your friend looks like that? O my friend, man is something that must be overcome. A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything. Your dream should betray to you what your friend does while awake. Your compassion should be a guess - to know first whether your friend wants compassion. Perhaps what he loves in you is the unbroken eye and the glance of eternity. Compassion for the friend should conceal itself under a hard shell, and you should break a tooth on it. That way it will have delicacy and sweetness. Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine for your friend? Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nevertheless redeem their friends. Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend, Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends. All-too-long have a slave and a tyrant been concealed in woman. Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love. Woman's love involves injustice and blindness against everything that she does not love. And even in the knowing love of a woman there are still assault and lightning and night alongside light. Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best, cows. Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, who among you is capable of friendship? Alas, behold your poverty, you men, and the meanness of your souls! As much as you give the friend, I will give even my enemy, and I shall not be any the poorer for it. There is comradeship: let there be friendship! Thus spoke Zarathustra. Thus Spoke Zarathustra Part I Friedrich Nietzsche
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Arius of Treve	Men - To 'Live Dangerously'	#11	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 10/17/01 21:20:52 Moderator	[283] "-Pioneers-. I greet all the signs that a more manly, warlike age is coming, which will, above all, bring valour again into honour! For it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age, and assemble the force which that age will one day have need of - that age which will carry heroism into knowledge and wage war for the sake of ideas and their consequences. To that end many brave pioneers are needed now, who, however, cannot originate out of nothing - and just as little out of the sand and slime of present-day civilization and the culture of great cities: men who know how to be silent, solitary, resolute,... who have an innate disposition to seek in all things that which must be overcome in them: men to whom cheerfulness, patience, simplicity and contempt for the great vanities belong just as much as do generosity in victory and indulgence towards the little vanities of the defeated:... men with their own festivals, their own work-days, their own days of mourning, accustomed to and assured in command and equally ready to obey when necessary, equally proud in the one case as in the other, equally serving their own cause: men more imperiled, men more fruitful, happier men! For believe me! - the secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon pass when you can be satisfied to live like timorous deer concealed in the forests. Knowledge will finally stretch out her hand for that which belongs to her - she means to rule and possess, and you with her!" Book IV From - The Gay Science - Friedrich Nietzsche "The language of this aphorism may stand as an example of Nietzsche's 'embattled' style. Those few passages in which he employs the vocabulary of war have done more harm to his reputation and led to more misunderstanding than all his other writings put together. Quoted out of context they sound like - indeed, they often amount to - incitement to armed conflict: in context, they amount to little more than... 'Strife is the perpetual good of the soul'. . . The philosopher must add to ability to think the ability to act, he must endow his thought with passion - he must live his philosophy and not only think it, he must become a warrior, a robber, a ravager, of knowledge." "The Wanderer" From - Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy Pg. 144-145 - R.J. Hollingdale
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Salamache	Strike Hard Roots Around Hard Rocks.	#12	[url]	[-]
Posts: 11 10/18/01 10:18:03	But why do I speak where nobody has my ears? And so let me shout it into all the winds: You are becoming smaller and smaller, you small people! You are crumbling, you comfortable one. You will yet perish of your many small virtues, of your small abstentions, of your many small resignations. Too considerate, too yielding in your soil. But that a tree may become great, it must strike hard roots around hard rocks. "It will give eventually" -- that is another teaching of resignation. But I tell you who are comfortable: it will take and will take more and more from you! On, that you would reject all halfhearted willing and would become resolute in sloth and deed! Alas, that you would understand my word: "Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will." But why do I speak where nobody has my ears? It is still an hour too early for me here. I am my own precursor among this people, my own cock's crow through dark lanes. But their hour will come! And mine will come too! Hourly, they are becoming smaller, poorer, more sterile - poor herbs! poor soil! and soon they shall stand there like dry grass and prairie -- and verily, weary of themselves and languishing even more than water -- for fire. Oh blessed hour of lightning! O secret become noon! I yet hope to turn into galloping fires and heralds with fiery tongues -- they shall yet proclaim with fiery tongues: It is coming, it is near -- the great noon! Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- Third Part On Virtue That Makes Small -- 3 Nietzsche two months later, right Arius? ;)
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Brant	Some Aphorisms	#13	[url]	[-]
Posts: 55 10/24/01 16:40:51	268. What makes one heroic? Going out to meet at the same time ones highest suffering and ones highest hope. 269. In what do you believe? In this, that the weights of all things must be determined anew. 270. What does your conscience say? "You shall become the person you are." 271. Where are your greatest dangers? In pity. 272. What do you love in others? My hopes. 273. Whom do you call bad? Those who always want to put to shame. 274. What do you consider most humane? To spare someone shame. 275. What is the seal of liberation? No longer being ashamed in front of oneself. Taken From: The Gay Science Friedrich Nietzsche
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Arius of Treve	Revaluation of All Values	#14	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 11/10/01 12:18:53 Moderator	"The needs of human beings are a matter of biology. The values in a culture are the values of certain men. Many people take the values of their culture for granted, as though they were somehow a part of the furniture of the universe. They should realize that the values they are taught are the values of particular men, and often, unfortunately, of men who, long ago, were short-lived, ignorant, uninformed, unhealthy and quite possibly of unsound mind. Perhaps human beings should, from the viewpoints of contemporary information and modern medicine, re-evaluate those perhaps anachronistic value structures. Values need not be something one somehow mysteriously 'knows,' a result of having forgotten the conditioning process by means of which they were instilled, but could be something chosen, something selected as instruments by means which to improve human life. It is not wrong for human beings to be happy." - EXPLORERS OF GOR, Pg. 361-362 "'Beyond Good and Evil' begins a new phase of Nietzsche's work, focusing on the 'revaluation of all values' and an explicit 'critique of modernity.' The book attacks the dogmatism that has afflicted philosophy so far, particularly regarding the nature of truth and morality. Philosophers' pretense to objectivity is just a pose. In fact, any philosophy of morality is an 'unconscious and involuntary memoir' of the person who presents it. Nietzsche calls for 'new philosophers' who would create new values through a process of open-minded experimentation. The philosopher, accordingly, has a significant political role, directing cultural development. Nietzsche urges philosophers to articulate an outlook that is 'beyond good and evil,' in other words, beyond the simplistic, judgmental moral categories employed as basic terms in the Christian worldview. While the articulation of new values is a challenging ambition, it is not an impossible dream. Moral values have already historically changed along with circumstances, so they are clearly malleable." Faced With a Book By Nietzsche From - What Nietzsche Really Said Pg. 76-77 - Robert Solomon & Kathleen Higgins
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Arius of Treve	To Conceive of Woman as a Possession	#15	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 11/18/01 21:52:11 Moderator	[238] "To go wrong on the fundamental problem of 'man and woman,' to deny the most abysmal antagonism between them and the necessity of an eternally hostile tension, to dream perhaps of equal rights, equal education, equal claims and obligations - that is a typical sign of shallowness, and a thinker who has proved shallow in this dangerous place - shallow in his instinct - may be considered altogether suspicious, even more - betrayed, exposed: probably he will be too 'short' for all fundamental problems of life, of the life yet to come, too, and incapable of attaining any depth. A man, on the other hand, who has depth, in his spirit as well as in his desires, including that depth of benevolence which is capable of discipline and hardness and easily mistaken for them, must always think about women as the Orientals do: he must conceive of woman as a possession, as property that can be locked, as something predestined for service and achieving her perfection in that. Here he must base himself on the tremendous reason of Asia, on Asia's superiority in the instincts, as the Greeks did formerly, who were Asia's best heirs and students: as is well known, from Homer's time to the age of Pericles, as their culture increased along with the range of their powers, they also became more stern, in brief, more Oriental, towards woman. How necessary, how logical, how humanely desirable even, this was - is worth pondering." On Virtues From - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Salamache	Herd Instinct and Morality	#16	[url]	[-]
Posts: 11 12/03/01 11:11:50	116 -- Herd Instinct -- Wherever we encounter a morality, we find evaluation and ranking of human drives and actions. These evaluations and rankings are always the expression of the needs of a community and herd: that which benefits it the most -- and second most, and third most -- is also the highest standard of value for all individuals. With morality the individual is instructed to be a function of the herd and to ascribe value to himself only as a function. Since the conditions for preserving one community have been very different from those of another community, there have been very different moralities; and in view of essential changes in herds and communities, states and societies that are yet to come, one can prophesy that there will yet be very divergent moralities. Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. Friedrich Nietzsche The Gay Science -- Book Three
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Arius of Treve	The Crumbling of Feminine Instincts	#17	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 12/07/01 13:28:18 Moderator	[239] "In no age has the weaker sex been treated with as much respect by men as in ours: that belongs to the democratic inclination and basic taste, just like disrespectfullness for old age. No wonder that this respect is immediately abused. One wants more, one learns to demand, finally one almost finds this tribute of respect insulting, one would prefer competition for rights, indeed even a genuine fight: enough, woman loses her modesty. Let us immediately add that she also loses taste. She unlearns her fear of man: but the woman who 'unlearns fear' surrenders her most womanly instincts. That woman ventures forth when the aspect of man that inspires fear - let us say more precisely, when the "man" in man is no longer desired and cultivated - that is fair enough, also comprehensible enough. What is harder to comprehend is that, by the same token - woman degenerates. This is what is happening today: let us not deceive ourselves about that. Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic (masterly) spirit, woman now aspires to the economic and legal self-reliance of a clerk: 'woman as clerk' is inscribed on the gate of modern society that is taking shape now. As she thus takes possession of new rights, aspires to become 'master' and writes the 'progress' of woman upon her standards and banners, the opposite development is taking place with terrible clarity: woman is retrogressing. Since the French Revolution, woman's influence in Europe has decreased propotionately as her rights and claims have increased; and the 'emancipation of woman,' insofar as that is demanded and promoted by women themselves (and not merely by shallow males) is thus seen to be an odd symptom of the increasing weakening and dulling of the most feminine instincts. There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity of which a woman who had turned out well - and such women are always prudent - would have to be thoroughly ashamed. To lose the sense for the ground on which one is most certain of victory; to neglect practice with one's proper weapons; to let oneself go before men, perhaps even 'to the point of writing a book,' when formerly one disciplined oneself to subtle and cunning humility; to work with virtuous audacity against men's faith in a basically different ideal that he takes to be concealed in woman, something Eternally-and-Necessarily-Femine - to talk men emphatically and loquaciously out of their notion that women must be maintained, taken care of, protected, and indulged like a more delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic animal; the awkward and indignant search for everything slavelike and serflike that has characterized woman's position in the order of society so far, and still does (as if slavery were a counterargument and not instead a condition of every higher culture, every enhancement of culture) - what is the meaning of all this if not a crumbling of feminine instincts, a defeminization? To be sure, there are enough imbecilic friends and corrupters of woman among the scholarly asses of the male sex who advise woman to defeminize herself in this way and to imitate all the stupidities with which 'man' in Europe, European 'manliness,' is sick: they would like to reduce woman to the level of 'general education,' probably even of reading the newspapers and talking about politics. Here and there they even want to turn women into freethinkers and scribblers - as if woman without piety would not seem utterly obnoxious and ridiculous to a profound and godless man. Almost everywhere one ruins her nerves with the most pathological and dangerous kind of "music" (our most recent German music) and makes her more hysterical by the day and more incapable of her first and last profession - to give birth to strong children. Altogether one wants to make her more 'cultivated' and, as is said, make the weaker sex strong through culture - as if history did not teach us as impressively as possible that making men 'cultivated' and making them weak - weakening, splintering, and sicklying over the force of the will - have always kept pace, and that the most powerful and influential women of the world (most recently Napoleon's mother) owed their power and ascendancy over men to the force of their will - and not to schoolmasters! What inspires respect for woman, and often enough even fear, is her nature, which is more 'natural' than man's, the genuine, cunning suppleness of a beast of prey, the tiger's claw under the glove, the naivete of her egoism, her uneducability and inner wildness, the incomprehensibility, scope, and movement of her desires and virtues - What, in spite of all fear, elicits pity for this dangerous and beautiful cat 'woman' is that she appears to suffer more, to be more vulnerable, more in need of love, and more condemned to disappoint than any other animal. Fear and pity: with these feelings man has so far confronted woman, and always with one foot in tragedy which tears to pieces as it enchants. What? And this should be the end? And the breaking of woman's magic spell is at work? The 'borification' of woman is slowly dawning? O Europe! Europe! We know the horned animal you always found most attractive; it still threatens you! Your old fable could yet become 'history' - once more an immense stupidity might become master over you and carry you off. And this time no god would hide in it; no, only an 'idea,' a 'modern idea'!" On Virtues From - Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Brant	More Aphorisms	#18	[url]	[-]
Posts: 55 12/08/01 14:13:50	121. Life is not an argument. We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we are able to live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith no one could endure living! But that does not prove them. Life is not an argument; the conditions of life might include error. 155. What we lack. We love what is great in nature and have discovered it - because in our heads, great human beings are lacking. It was the other way around for the Greeks; their feeling for nature was different from ours. 224. Animals' criticism. I fear that the animals see man as a being like them who in a most dangerous manner has lost his animal common sense - as the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal. 236. In order to move the crowd. Must not he who wants to move the crowd be an actor playing the role of himself? Must he not first translate himself into the grotesquely obvious and present his entire person and cause in this coarsened and simplified version? 251. Misunderstood sufferers. Great natures suffer differently from what their admirers imagine: they suffer most severely from the ignoble, petty agitations of some evil moments - in short, from their doubts about their own greatness - and not from the sacrifices and martyrdoms that their task demands from them. As long as Prometheus has pity for men and sacrifices himself for them, he is happy and great; but when he is envious of Zeus and the homage paid to him by mortals, then he suffers! Taken From: The Gay Science Friedrich Nietzsche
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Brant	The Strength of the Weak	#19	[url]	[-]
Posts: 55 12/08/01 14:14:56	66. The strength of the weak. All women are subtle at exaggerating their weaknesses; indeed they are inventive at weaknesses in order to appear as utterly fragile ornaments that are harmed by even a speck of dust: their way of living is supposed to remind men of their clumsiness and burden their conscience with this. Thus they defend themselves against the strong and 'the law of the jungle.' Taken From: The Gay Science Friedrich Nietzsche
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Arius of Treve	The Women who Master the Masters	#20	[url]	[-]
Posts: 522 01/04/02 12:16:45 Moderator	[70] The women who master the masters. - "A deep and powerful alto voice, such as one sometimes hears in the theatre, suddenly raises the curtain upon possibilities that we usually do not believe in. All at once we believe that somewhere in the world there could be women with lofty, heroic, royal souls, capable of and ready for grandiose retorts, resolutions, and sacrifices, capable of and ready for mastery over men, because in them the best of man aside from his sex has become an incarnate ideal. To be sure, the intention of the theatre is not at all that such voices convey this concept of women; normally they are supposed to represent the ideal male lover, for example a Romeo; but to judge from my experience, the theatre quite regularly miscalculates on this point, as does the composer who expects such effects from a voice. One does not believe in these lovers; such always retain a motherly and housewifely colouring, and most of all when love is in their tone." Book Two From - The Gay Science - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Bits on Nietzsche, Norman and Gorean Philosophy	08/17/01 21:07:39	Arius of Treve
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