More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation.
the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts,
It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.
The actual “interests” of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction—in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics;
A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power;
but the philosopher must say to himself: “When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, ‘I think,’ I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible:
that a thought comes when “it” wishes, and not when “I” wish; so that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.”
the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion, and in fact the emotion of the command.
We sail away right over morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage thither—but
okay prose
In what strange simplification and falsification man lives!
(I do everything to be “difficultly understood” myself!)—and
Mans succeeded for centuries at that
There are honestly meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the original, merely because its lively and merry tempo (which overleaps and obviates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be rendered.
Makes me think of "mediation" as a way to increase "accessibility" but that inhibiting "authenticity"
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.
If this came from anyone else, I would define 'profound' in this sentence as something pleasurable and read this sentence as sort of bittersweet; a sort of ode to the social boundaries and constraints that force individuals to hide and mask unique traits of theirs that make them 'profound',... but that this came from Nietzsche,, I am concerned
Was it not necessary to sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness—this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we all know something thereof already.
Woah Nietzsche was hundreds of years in the future here… consumer culture and hedonism hello,,, the priority for the instant pleasure and rampant consumption of culturally abundant goods like water bursting from a dam (and the mass repeated consumption leading to no long-term pleasure = the sacrifice for nothingness)
also hints at Nietzsche's nihilism, that without spirituality, in a society that has been so heavily build around and influenced by religion, people have lost a notion of being able to ascribe meaning to things for themselves
“I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually—the memory yields.
Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye—and calls it his pride.
Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself.
A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment:
Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them is not something dreadful also.
The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions.
To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.
In short, systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions.
After all, “love to our neighbor” is always a secondary matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our fear of our neighbor.
There is nowadays, throughout almost the whole of Europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and also a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an effeminizing, which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense, seeks to deck itself out as something superior—there is a regular cult of suffering.
