Beyond good and bad (Nietzsche)

First edition of the work from 1886

Beyond Good and Evil. The prelude to a philosophy of the future is a work by Friedrich Nietzsche that appeared in 1886 and aims to criticize traditional moral concepts .

The work forms the transition from Nietzsche's middle, rather poetic, positive creative period to his later work, which is dominated by philosophical thinking. This is also expressed in the subtitle of the work “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future”. Beyond good and evil was thought in prehistoric times, when actions were judged by their effect. Morality came when actions were judged by their intention. Nietzsche's demand was to return to the perspective of the pre-moral times. He was looking for a morality that went beyond existing norms and values ​​and was not tied to historical tradition influenced by religion. His alternative is a new philosophy of "immorality" that is linked to the respective perspectives of the person . (JGB 32) This he combined with the concept of the will to power , which is the principle that determines all people and all of nature . At the same time, Nietzsche made a fundamental criticism of the society of his time, out of which he demanded a revaluation of all values , which are based on the will to power and an elegant life.

The sigil of the book that is commonly used in Nietzsche research today is JGB .

Classification in Nietzsche's writings

Friedrich Nietzsche around 1885

According to Giorgio Colli , in Beyond Good and Evil, "central themes from the time of the human and all-too-human to the cheerful science" are taken up and processed again, especially with regard to moral philosophy . Mazzino Montinari divided Nietzsche's oeuvre into three phases, the first of which encompassed the period up to before Zarathustra (1882), the middle phase made up Zarathustra himself and the later phase all works afterwards (from 1886). According to this, Beyond Good and Evil would be the first work of the later phase, which in the genealogy of morality experienced a resumption and reinforcement of the most important themes. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche himself made a classification of his philosophical writings. He distinguished four groups: As Writings of the Crisis he called his early writings ( Birth of Tragedy 1872, Untimely Considerations 1873–1876 and Human, All Too Human 1878–1880 (KSA 6, EH 323)). This is followed by three “hunting” books with Dawn 1881, Happy Science 1882/1887 and, as the climax, Zarathustra 1883–1885 (KSA 6, EH 330, 333 and 343). This is followed by three “no-say” books, the first of which is Beyond Good and Evil. This was followed by the Genealogy of Morals in 1887 and the Twilight of the Idols in 1889. In these writings, Nietzsche's late work waged a “great war” against conventional morality, which he had to overcome. (EH 351) He finally summarized his late writings under “revaluation” (KSA 6, EH 355). Regarding the no-saying books, he remarked:

"After the yes-saying part of my task had been solved, it was the turn of the no-saying, no-doing half: the revaluation of the previous values themselves, the great war - the summoning of a day of decision." (KSA 6, EH 355).

On the Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche stated:

"This book (1886) is essentially a criticism of m odernity, the modern sciences, the modern arts, even modern politics not excluded, along with a hint of a type of antithesis that is as little modern as possible, an aristocratic, a hounding type. In the latter sense, the book is a school of gentilhomme, the term taken more spiritually and more radically than it has ever been taken. You have to have the courage to endure it, you don't have to have learned to fear [...] ”(KSA 6, EH 350)

Beyond good and evil is a philosophical underpinning and further development of the thoughts poetically developed in Zarathustra. The task that Nietzsche has set himself is to abolish the values ​​of mass democracy, for which “the famous 'objectivity'” of the Enlightenment and “the 'compassion for all who suffer'” of Christianity are responsible, and in a revaluation of all values to redefine. (KSA 6, EH 351) The “gentil homme”, the noble person in the sense of the aristocratic superman , should learn from the work and have the courage to follow the new insights and realize the counter-model of a “noble morality”. Nietzsche linked a message with Beyond Good and Evil, so that this book is not as artistically shaped as Zarathustra, but in such a way that the message comes across as drastically and convincingly as possible. This also means that it contains omissions when measured against a complete discussion of its topic. Nietzsche partly hid the truth and only expresses it in allusions by raising opposites.

“In all the pieces, especially in the form, you will find the same arbitrary turning away from the instincts from which a Zarathustra was possible. The refinement in form, with intention, in the art of silence is in the foreground, the psychology is handled with admitted severity and cruelty - the book lacks any good-natured word ... "(KSA 6, EH 351)

Origin of the work

Announcement of The Will to Power on the back of the first edition of Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

Beyond good and bad was already the title of a collection of sentences by Nietzsche from 1882, from which he also adopted content in his book. In The Happy Science , where Nietzsche addressed the perspective of moral criticism from outside of morality with Beyond Good and Evil (FW 380), the following poem can be found at the end in the songs of Prince Vogelfrei :

Sils-Maria .

Here I sat, waiting, waiting, - but for nothing,

Beyond good and bad, soon of light

Enjoying, soon the shadow, just playing,

All the lake, all the noon, all the time without a goal.

There, suddenly, friend! became one to two -

- And Zarathustra passed me ...

Beyond good and evil , here is a description of a state that, completely independent of evaluations, refers to the originality of life and a direct connection between man and nature. At the end of Beyond Good and Evil , in the aftermath , there is again a poetic reference to Zarathustra .

Now we are celebrating the feast of feasts, certainly united victories:

Friend Zarathustra came, the guest of the guests!

Now the world is laughing, the gray curtain tore

The wedding came for light and darkness ...

Nietzsche can proudly sit back and celebrate. By criticizing traditional philosophy, science, religion and morality, he has shown that the right values ​​can be found in a noble morality, in life, detached from all cultural distortions. The joyous science and beyond of good and evil frame the Zarathustra .

While working on Zarathustra , Nietzsche had considered using the title for a chapter of the third or fourth part.

At first Nietzsche had considered writing a sequel to Human, All Too Human after Zarathustra . But then he decided to start a new, independent work. The preparatory work began in 1885, parallel to Zarathustra . In doing so, Nietzsche used materials that went back to 1881, and in some cases those that he had not used for Zarathustra . Many of the topics, such as the truth, the role of science, or psychology, can already be found in Happy Science . According to Walter Kaufmann , the three works before Zarathustra still have a strongly experimental character, whereas Nietzsche wrote longer aphorisms afterwards that are more like philosophical hypotheses. In Zarathustra the term Beyond Good and Evil also appears, where in “The Other Dance Song” life speaks to Zarathustra: “We are both two right do-not-goods and do-not-evil”. Both stand outside of morality and in the “beyond good and evil”. (KSA 4 Za 284) In the following, Nietzsche described his Beyond Good and Evil as a kind of glossary for Zarathustra , which he hoped could receive more attention in connection with the new script.

Nietzsche created the fair copy and the print manuscript in the winter of 1885/86 during a stay in Nice . In a letter to Peter Gast dated March 27, 1886, Nietzsche wrote: "This winter I have used to write something that has difficulties in abundance, so that my courage to publish it wobbles and trembles here and there." the book, which Nietzsche financed himself for lack of other possibilities like other writings before, finally in August 1886 in the publishing house of CG Naumann, Leipzig. On the back of the envelope it contained the announcement “In preparation: The will to power . An attempt at a revaluation of all values ”.

Structure of the plant

The work is formulated in aphorisms of various lengths and structured as follows:

• preface
• First main part: On the prejudices of the philosophers (1. - 23.)
• Second main part: The free spirit (24th - 44th)
• Third main part: The religious essence (45. - 62)
• Fourth main part: Proverbs and interludes (63. - 185)
• Fifth main part: On the natural history of morality (186 - 203)
• Chapter Six: We Scholars (204-213)
• Chapter Seventh: Our Virtues (214-239)
• Eighth chapter: peoples and fatherlands (240 - 256)
• Ninth main part: what is elegant? (257-296)
• From high mountains. Aftermath

The main pieces one through three form a context that deals with philosophy and religion. After the interlude in the fourth main piece, there is a second block, which is primarily about morality and politics. The connection between the first three main pieces is a dialectical development. At first Nietzsche turned against the dogmatics of philosophy. He contrasts this with the idea of ​​the will to power . Finally, he resolves the conflict in a striving that strengthens itself “for the ideal of the most exuberant, most lively and world-affirming person, who has not only come to terms with what was and is, but has learned to come to terms with it as it was and is wanting to have it again ”. (JGB 56) The ninth main piece forms the conclusion and relates to both the second block and the entire work.

The preface throws a spotlight on the objective of the text: The aim is to overcome dogmatism through the perspectivism of free spirits, which opposes historical superstition, confusion of language and the seductions of subject belief.

• "Seriously speaking, there are good reasons to hope that everything dogmatizing in philosophy, however solemn, however final and final it may have been, may only have been a noble childish and beginnings"
• "However, it meant turning the truth upside down and denying perspective, the basic condition of all life, to speak of the spirit and the good as Plato did"
• “But we who are neither Jesuits nor democrats nor even Germans enough, we good Europeans and free, very free spirits - we still have them, all the distress of the spirit and all the tension of its bow! And maybe also the arrow, the task, who knows? the goal....."

Individual topics

Perspectivism

Nietzsche emphasizes that one of the basic characteristics of human beings is to organize their lives according to their individual demands and needs. This cannot be derived from nature. This is neutral towards human needs and wishes. Humans are therefore compelled to create their own standard through which an assessment can be made. The perspective is a "basic condition of life" (JGB introduction), which is why one cannot set the spirit or the good absolutely like Plato. That is why all philosophy must start from man. In this sense Nietzsche is a forerunner of the philosophy of life . Based on this thesis, Nietzsche's philosophy is also called perspectivism . Indifference is not part of the essence of man , but difference . With this, Nietzsche gave an important keyword for (French) post-structuralism .

“Do you want to live 'according to nature'? Oh noble stoics, what a deceit of words! Imagine a being like nature, lavish without measure, indifferent without measure, without intentions and considerations, without mercy and justice, fruitful and dreary and uncertain at the same time, think of indifference itself as power - how can you according to that live this indifference? Life - isn't that just wanting to be different from what nature is? Isn't life appraising, preferring, being injustice, being limited, wanting to be different? "(JGB, 9)

Perspectivism means that reality is subjective to man as the world appears to him. He has to interpret the world. "Assuming that this is also only an interpretation - and you will be eager enough to object - now all the better -." (JGB 22) Nietzsche points out to the reader that he is only reading one interpretation. That the world is to be seen in perspective and the respective worldview is an interpretation runs through all of Nietzsche's later writings. But this also means that the world is just a fiction that is an interpretation of experience. If so, there would be no need to ask who created the world, or a final reason. The perspective and the difference to other perspectives are decisive.

“Why shouldn't the world that concerns us - be fiction? And who asks: 'But fiction includes an author?' - it shouldn't be answered roundly: Why? Isn't this 'Belongs' part of fiction? "(JGB 34)

truth

Nietzsche is critical of the goals of traditional philosophy, which uses ethical values ​​to block access to the real world of human life.

“There are beautiful, glittering, clinking festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful - there is something about it that makes one swell with pride. But we hermits and marmots, we have long since persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of a hermit conscience that this worthy word pomp also belongs to the old lie-plaster, junk and gold dust of unconscious human vanity, and that also among such flattering vanity Color and overpainting the terrible basic text homo natura must be recognized again. "(JGB 230)

For Nietzsche, falsehood, illusions or the inadequate are also justified if they serve life. Myth and art, in poetry, painting, and above all in music, would create a semblance just like metaphysics or religion. They are the expression of a perspectivism of the human mind and the starting point for imagination and creativity. If one questioned the traditional values, the values ​​would be completely different from those which philosophy has previously taught.

“The will to truth, which will still tempt us into many a risk, that famous truthfulness which all philosophers have hitherto spoken of with respect: what questions has this will to truth put to us! What strange, bad, questionable questions! [...] We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? "(JGB 1)

In addition to the truth, there are influences on life that do not make sense to know the truth in every case - even if it is only that life is more pleasant without knowledge of the truth. If you admit this, you may have to break away from the old values. “Admitting untruth as a condition of life: that means, of course, resisting the accustomed feelings of value in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that dares to do so is already beyond good and evil. "(JGB 4)

Nietzsche criticized the scientific worldview, which was narrowly limited to sensualism and thus could not grasp reality in its entirety. "The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense". Belief in engineering and Darwinism may meet the requirements of a practical life, but does not reach the necessary depth. “It is now dawning in five or six heads that physics is only a world interpretation and arrangement (after us! With all due respect) and not an explanation of the world: but insofar as it is based on belief in the senses , it counts as more and must for a long time still count as more, namely as an explanation. […] Conversely: the magic of the platonic way of thinking, which was a noble way of thinking, consisted precisely in the resistance to sensory perception - perhaps among people who enjoyed even stronger and more demanding senses than our contemporaries have, but who have a higher triumph in it knew how to remain master of these senses: "(JGB 14)

Epistemologically, Nietzsche relied on a strict fallibilism : “Regardless of the point of view of philosophy one may take today: Seen from every point, the sincerity of the world in which we believe we live is the safest and most stable of which our eye can see can still get hold of […] ”(JGB 34)“ The world that concerns us is wrong, ie it is not a fact, but a compression and rounding over a meager sum of observations; it is "in flux" as something becoming, as an ever-changing falsehood that never approaches the truth: because - there is no "truth". "

For Nietzsche, all ontological statements are fictions. One cannot establish a connection to reality from its principles such as causality .

"In the" in-itself "there is nothing of" causal associations ", of" necessity ", of" psychological lack of freedom ", there does not follow" the effect on the cause ", no" law "rules that. It is we who alone have invented the causes, the successive, the for-one another, the relativity, the compulsion, the number, the law, the freedom, the ground, the purpose; and when we mix this world of signs as "in itself" into things, we do it again as we have always done, namely mythologically. "(JGB 21)

In his philosophy criticism Nietzsche was directed against the "seduction by words" and the "belief in grammar". The language, which is based on the principle of subject and predicate, leads to an unjustified reification of the world. “What are predicates? - We did not accept changes in ourselves as such, but as an "in-itself" that is alien to us, that we only "perceive": and we have posited them not as an event but as a being, as a "property «- and invented a being to which they adhere, that is, we have assumed the effect as something active and the active thing as a being. [...] To set the happening as action: and the effect as being: that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty. ”Instead, Nietzsche pleaded for the insight that truth is subjective and therefore only“ levels of appearance ” exist. (JGB 34) Therefore the question arises what value the truth has at all. Truth could be in clear contradiction to usefulness, while one could live very well on the basis of an error.

In language, too, people tend to interpret their environment in a way that corresponds to their habits and expectations. In doing so, he usually does not care at all about avoiding errors, but rather whether what he has recorded is useful for his purposes. Truth is not possible because language is inadequate for an adequate description of reality. Every sentence in this sense is incomplete and therefore wrong. Language has an instrumental character and includes a perspective world view.

"Just as little as a reader today reads the individual words (or even syllables) on a page - he rather randomly takes about five out of twenty words and" guesses "the meaning presumably associated with these five words - just as little do we see one Tree accurate and complete, in terms of leaves, branches, color, shape; it is so much easier for us to fantasize about something like a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences, we still do the same: we invent the greater part of the experience and can hardly be compelled not to watch something happening as "inventors". All this means: we are fundamentally, from old age, used to lying. Or, to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more artist than one knows. "(JGB 192)

Will to power

The basis for the criticism of conventional moral philosophy is Nietzsche's idea that everything can be explained by the will to power. The will to power is not only expressed in people, but is a principle underlying the whole world. With the thesis that the "mechanistic (or" material ") world" is "a more primitive form of affects" (JGB 36), Nietzsche came close to Whitehead's thesis that every element of the world has both a physical and a spiritual pole That matter and spirit cannot be separated. Without the will to power there is no reason and no appreciation. “The whole of psychology has so far stuck to moral prejudices and fears: it has not ventured into the depths. To grasp it as the morphology and development of the will to power as I grasp it - nobody has touched on that in his own thoughts: ”(JGB 23) In the estate it says succinctly:“ Our instincts can be reduced to the will to power . “Urges are a necessary condition of life.

Nietzsche had discussed the reduction of the opposition of good and bad to selfish instincts with his former friend Paul Rée , who had dealt with this question in his work “The Origin of Moral Sensations” . Nietzsche believed that many theories of philosophy could find their correct explanation through a meaningful application of psychology. This means a dissolution of metaphysical ideas and a turn to a scientific explanation of man. "By putting an end to the superstition that has so far been rampant around the concept of the soul with an almost tropical opulence, the new psychologist has of course pushed himself into a new desert and a new distrust -" (JGB 12)

Nietzsche compared the " freedom of will " established as causa sui in Spinoza or through the noumenon in Kant "with more than Münchhausen's boldness to pull oneself out of the swamp of nothing by the hair into existence." (JGB 21) Morality cannot be justified universally. Behavior and attitudes can be explained scientifically. “Physiologists should think about setting up the instinct for self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. Above all, something living wants to let go of its power - life itself is the will to power -: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of this. "(JGB 13)

If an “I” is formed in thinking, the idea of ​​a subject, for Nietzsche this has its origin in grammar. (JGB 54) Even if one thinks away the subject and instead of “I think” says “it thinks”, the grammar still has an effect, which in this way also affects the logicians in their thinking. (JGB 17) The "I" is only one word as a unit. (JGB 19) “In short, you psychologists, study the philosophy of the“ rule ”in combat with the“ exception ”: there you have a play good enough for gods and divine malice! Or, even more today: drive vivisection on "good people", on "homo bonae voluntatis" ..... on you! "

Nietzsche saw it as the task of psychologists to trace back the values ​​claimed by the philosophers to psychological mechanisms. If this succeeds, this discipline could even "be recognized again as the master of the sciences". (JGB 23) "In doing so, one must of course chase away the stupid psychology of Ehedem, which only knew how to teach about cruelty, that it would arise at the sight of someone else's suffering: there is an abundant, abundant pleasure in one's own suffering, in one's own - and where only man leads to self-denial in the religious sense or to self-mutilation, as in the case of Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general to delusionalization, defecation, contrition, to puritanic penance, to vivisection of conscience and to the Pascalic sacrifique dell ' intelletto [the victim of the mind] lets himself be persuaded, then he is secretly lured and pushed forward by his cruelty, by those dangerous shudders of the cruelty turned against himself. "(JGB 229)

The will to power as a psychological driving force derived from nature, the impulse always coming from within, is beyond good and evil. He is the origin of creativity that goes beyond self-preservation and self-love. The will to power is the basis for "the doctrine of the deduction of all good instincts from bad ones." (JGB 23) With this thesis, Nietzsche anticipated the doctrine of Sigmund Freud's sublimation . "The degree and type of sexuality reaches up to the last peak of his mind." (JGB 75) With the concept of the will to power one can open up all life phenomena. Philosophy is also a form of the “spiritual will to power” (JGB 9). He discussed the relationship between will and causality and proposed the hypothesis that “wherever“ effects ”are recognized, will affects will - and whether not everything mechanical occurrences, in so far as a force is active in them, which is will-power, will-effect. [...] The world seen from within, the world is determined and designated in terms of its »intelligible character« - it would be »will to power« and nothing else. "(JGB 36)

That Nietzsche thinks the will to power as a cosmological principle can be seen from a passage in the estate of 1885:

“And do you also know what about 'the world'? Should I show you in my mirror? This world: a monster of power, without beginning, without end, a fixed, brazen amount of power (...), as a play of forces and waves of force at the same time one and 'many', here accumulating and at the same time decreasing there Sea in self-storming and flowing forces, forever changing, forever running backwards [...] - This world is the will to power. "

This passage is strongly reminiscent of the process philosophy that Alfred North Whitehead outlined in Process and Reality , including the metaphor of flowing water. With Nietzsche, too, a non-substantialist interdependence between all elements of the world can be seen. The will to power implies that there is always an opposition between different powers. "The unalterable succession of certain phenomena does not prove a" law, "but a power relationship between two or more forces". Power as a category of order in the world can only exist if there are constant interrelationships between the entities concerned. Whitehead's highest category, comparable to the will to power, is creativity, which underlies the striving of the world and is described as a pulsating becoming between unity and multiplicity. Nietzsche combined the will to power, conceived as a process, with the concept of interpretation. "One must not ask:" Who is interpreting? "Instead, interpreting itself, as a form of the will to power, has existence (but not as a" being ", but as a process, a becoming) as an affect."

religion

Nietzsche no longer discussed the question of God's death in Beyond Good and Evil , but proceeded from this fact. God is a fiction like all absolute ideas, a "religious neurosis ". (JGB 47) Nietzsche predicted the possibility that the terms “God” and “sin” would in future have no greater meaning than “children's toys” and “children's pain”. (JGB 57) Already in the introduction Nietzsche stated: “Christianity is Platonism for the 'people',” Religion has the function of generating a worldview with which the broad masses can be guided and regulated. The Christianity generating a "morality of common compassion." (JGB 202) Because of insufficient education, disciplining the masses is easier to achieve through religion than through philosophical theories.

The human being as "not yet established animal" can take a position on himself and design his own future. The main stumbling block is religion. (JGB 62) “The Christian faith is sacrifice from the beginning: sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-assurance of the spirit; bondage and self-mockery at the same time, self-mutilation. "(JGB 46)

The main function of religion is to maintain power. The Church has proven this over a long history - albeit at the price that it has worked “on the deterioration of the European race” and “made man a sublime freak”. (JGB 62) “The way in which reverence for the Bible has been maintained in Europe on the whole is perhaps the best piece of discipline and refinement of custom that Europe owes to Christianity: such books of depth and ultimate significance are needed a tyranny of authority coming from outside to protect them, in order to win those millennia of duration which are necessary to exhaust them and to exhaust them. "(JGB 263)

If you free yourself from the blinds of religion, you can get a completely different, positive view of the world.

"Anyone who, like me, has long endeavored with some enigmatic desire to think deeply into pessimism and to redeem it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and simplicity with which it last presented itself in this century, namely in Shape of Schopenhauer philosophy; Anyone who has really once looked into the most world-negative of all possible modes of thought with an Asian and supra-Asian eye - beyond good and evil, and no longer, like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the spell and delusion of morality - may have just that, without that he actually wanted to open his eyes to the opposite ideal: for the ideal of the most exuberant, most lively and world-affirming person "(JGB 56)

However, Nietzsche did not recommend the abolition of religion, but rather to continue to use it as an instrument, as “a means of breeding and upbringing in the hands of the philosopher” (JGB 62). Religions like Christianity or Buddhism have an important function to train the masses in their role so that they can endure a hierarchical order.

“The philosopher as we understand him, we free spirits - as the man of the most extensive responsibility, who has the conscience for the overall development of man: this philosopher will use religions for his works of breeding and education, as he does the respective political and economic conditions. [...] Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of upbringing and refinement if a race wants to master its origins from the mob and work its way up to the former rule. Finally, to ordinary people, the vast majority, who are there for service and general benefit and are only allowed to exist to this extent, religion gives an inestimable frugality with their situation and manner, multiple peace of heart, a refinement of obedience, happiness and sorrow more Her equals and something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification for all of everyday life, all of the baseness, all of the half-animal poverty of her soul. Religion and the religious significance of life puts sunshine on such troubled people and makes their own sight bearable for them; it has the same effect as an Epicurean philosophy tends to work on sufferers of higher rank, refreshing, refining, exploiting suffering, ultimately even sanctifying and sanctifying justifying. "(JGB 61)

Interlude

The interlude is a dramaturgical interruption of the train of thought developed up to then in order to create a transition to the more socially critical aphorisms of the second part. Here brief statements are formulated in a relaxed manner, which bring the more extensive thought developments of the other parts of Beyond Good and Evil to the point. Below is a selection of particularly well-known and impressive sayings:

• Love for one is a barbarism: for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Also love for God. (JGB 67)
• "I did that," says my memory. I couldn't have done that - says my pride and remains inexorable. Finally - the memory gives way. (JGB 68)
• Once the decision is made to close your ears to the best counter-reason: a sign of strong character. So an occasional will to be stupid. (JGB 107)
• There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena ... (JGB 108)
• A people is the detour of nature, in order to come to six or seven great men.- Yes: and then to come around them. (JGB 126)
• Only from the senses comes all credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth. (JGB 134)
• The abdomen is the reason why humans do not easily think of themselves as a god. (JGB 141)
• What is done out of love always happens beyond good and evil. (JGB 153)
• The objection, the affair, the cheerful mistrust, the lust for ridicule are signs of health: everything that is unconditional belongs to pathology. (JGB 154)
• The madness is something rare with individuals - but with groups, parties, peoples, times the rule. (JGB 156)
• Not only our reason but also our conscience submits to our strongest instincts, the tyrant within us. (JGB 156)
• Talking a lot about yourself can also be a means of concealing yourself. (JGB 169)
• Compassion almost makes a person of knowledge laugh, like tender hands on a cyclops. (JGB 171)
• In the end, one loves one's desire and not what is desired. (JGB 175)

Moral criticism

With regard to morality, Nietzsche had an educational claim. For him, ethics was the "doctrine of the relations of domination [...] under which the phenomenon of 'life' arises." (JGB 19) He wanted to tackle belief in morality through "testing, dissection, doubting, vivisection". (JGB No. 186) In doing so, he mainly turned against

• the principle "laedere neminem" [hurt nobody] (JGB 186)
• the egalitarianism , that "his will to others equate" (JGB 259)
• the universalism "generalize where nothing can be generalized" as "a morality for all" (JGB no. 228), against a (JGB 198)

His criticism is not just a criticism of individual norms and moral conventions, but is primarily directed against the foundations of any moral system. The one-sided focus of morality on values ​​misjudges the psychological background of morality. "Fear is ... the mother of morality." (JGB, 122)

“Happiness and virtue are not arguments. But one likes to forget, even on the part of level-headed spirits, that making unhappy and making bad are just as little counter-arguments. […] But there is no doubt that the wicked and unfortunate are more fortunate in discovering certain parts of the truth and have a greater probability of success; not to speak of the wicked who are happy - a species which is kept secret by the moralists. "(JGB 39)

Nietzsche's perspectivism is shown in the fact that he considers several morals to be possible for an individual. One can also speak of pluralism in this context . The moral world is colorful. “How in the realm of the stars there are sometimes two suns that determine the orbit of a planet, how in certain cases suns of different colors shine around a single planet, now with red light, now with green light, and then again at the same time striking it and colorfully overflowing: this is how we modern people are, thanks to the complicated mechanics of our "starry sky" - determined by various morals; our actions alternately shine in different colors, they are seldom unambiguous - and there are enough cases where we do colorful actions. "(JGB 215)

Nietzsche missed a science of empirical research into morality in order to escape the possible errors that might lie in the personal needs of the individual moral philosopher. Based on the Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder, he demanded a “natural history of morality” from the philosophers, that is, a “collection of material, conceptual formulation and assembly of an immense realm of delicate feelings of value and value differences that live, grow, testify and become the basis go". (JGB No. 186) One can understand Michel Foucault's work as such a research program.

In addition to collecting empirical facts about existing morals, Nietzsche was concerned with a historical analysis of the emergence of “moral value distinctions” (JGB 260). This analysis is intended to underline that moral values ​​are not objective, but have arisen from the respective social context. Nietzsche's perspectivism is again expressed in the thesis that morality as such is dependent on culture. Morality is the result of class, religion and the zeitgeist, i.e. historically determined.

The historical analysis of the development of morality led Nietzsche to the distinction between “master morality and slave morality”.

“There are master morals and slave morals; - I immediately add that in all higher and more mixed cultures attempts to mediate both morals come to light, even more often the confusion of the same and mutual misunderstanding, even sometimes their harsh coexistence - even in the same person, within one soul. "(JGB 260)

With this consideration Nietzsche's personal background as a classical philologist comes into play. As a teenager he had already dealt with Theognis von Megara and its rules for the education of the nobility. The archaic and early classical works of Greece boast different values ​​than those found in the holy Jewish scriptures with the prophets. From the perspective of the elite, master morality distinguishes between good and bad as basic values. Good here means strength, pride, refinement, self-confident perception of privileges, toughness against the less qualified mass and oneself. (Cf. JGB 260 and 272) There are natural differences in men's morality, which are reflected in a different rank of people and the spheres of value. On the other hand there is the slave morality, which distinguishes between good and bad from the perspective of the masses, the mediocre and the underprivileged. Slave morality reclaims the duty and guilt of others. Its characteristic is the enforcement of group interests and social balance. Their values ​​are equality, obedience, impartiality, altruism, abolition of privileges, eradication of poverty, "public spirit, benevolence, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, compassion." (JGB 199)

Based on the opposition between masters and slaves, Nietzsche divided “human history” into three periods: 1. the “pre-moral”, then 2. the “moral” and 3. finally the “extra-moral” (JGB 32). It was the religion of the Jews that historically brought about the reversal of values ​​from a pre-moral to a moral society. Through their value setting a spirit developed which was directed against the natural hierarchies:

"The Jews - a people" born to slavery ", as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say," the chosen people among the peoples ", as they themselves say and believe - the Jews brought about that miracle of reversal of values, Thanks to which life on earth has received a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millennia: - their prophets melted "rich" "godless" "evil" "violent" "sensual" into one and for the first time the word "world" turned into a word of disgrace. In this reversal of values ​​(to which it belongs to use the word for "poor" as synonymous with "holy" and "friend") lies the meaning of the Jewish people: with them the slave revolt begins in morality. "( JGB 195)

The gentleman thinks in the category of the above and below, the hierarchy. His yardstick is good and bad. The slave man, on the other hand, who is fearful and skeptical, follows the standard of good and evil because he sees this as a means of improving his situation.

"Wherever slave morality becomes predominant, the language shows a tendency to bring the words" good "and" stupid "together." (JGB 260)

The democracy movement that emerged from the Enlightenment is a revolution from below. Nietzsche saw the origin of this thinking in England, much earlier than in France. The Enlightenment takes over from Christianity, which it has replaced itself, the egalitarian body of thought, the morality of egalitarianism and so at best leads to mediocrity. “The" Enlightenment "is outraged: the slave wants the unconditional, he only understands the tyrannical, also in morality, he loves as he hates, without nuance, down to the depths, down to pain, down to illness - his many hidden things Leiden revolted against the noble taste, which seems to deny suffering. Skepticism about suffering, basically just an attitude of aristocratic morality, is not least of all involved in the development of the last great slave uprising, which began with the French Revolution. "(JGB, 46)

Equality and a moral for all, the common good or the utilitarian greatest happiness of the greatest number, contradict the natural hierarchy of human beings. These are demands of the masses. The respectable but only mediocre Englishmen like Darwin , Mill or Spencer would have created a preponderance in Europe. (JGB 253) Conscience is the result of the norms of slave morality. There is no logical reason for this. Nietzsche saw the origin of justice in the contract, in keeping promises. A violation against it creates a guilty conscience and triggers the punishing justice. The slave morality ties in with this mechanism without having a claim to the performance of the strong because they received no consideration. Slave morality is therefore unjust. Equality is an injustice to the unequal. (Cf. JGB 201) “None of all these clumsy, in conscience troubled herd animals (who undertake to lead the cause of egoism as a matter of general welfare -) want to know and smell that the" general welfare "is not an ideal, no The goal is not a somehow comprehensible term, but just an emetic, "(JGB No. 228)

The slave morality makes those bad who were good in the natural order. The condemnation of the strong is “the favorite revenge of the mentally limited”. (JGB 219) The strong are now those who are supposedly cruel, spread suffering, are insatiable, who have to be humiliated and punished for their superiority. For Nietzsche, this hatred of the burdened and poor is above all an expression of envy. Morality is obedience to a ruling ideology.

“The slave's gaze is unfavorable to the virtues of the mighty: he has skepticism and mistrust, he has delicacy of mistrust of everything“ good ”that is honored there - he would like to persuade himself that happiness itself is not genuine there. Conversely, the properties are drawn out and doused with light, which serve to make life easier for the suffering: here comes pity, the agreeable, helpful hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, friendliness to honor - because these are the most useful qualities here, and almost the only means of enduring the pressures of existence. The slave morality is essentially utility morality. "(JGB 260)

Conventional morality serves the interests of individual or specific groups. It is therefore of extra-moral origin and contrary to human nature. "In contrast to laisser aller, every morality is a piece of tyranny against 'nature' ... The essential and inestimable thing about every morality is that it is a long compulsion." (JGB, 108)

Europe and the Jews

For Nietzsche there is a close connection between Judaism and Europe . Through Christianity, Europe has a substantial part of its roots in the Jewish religion. Europe owes the Jews "the great style of morality." (JGB 250) At the same time, Nietzsche directed his hope that the Jews could be an impetus for a better Europe. Hope insofar as the Jews in Europe had no tendencies towards nationalisms, as they were not only, but to a large extent, to be found in Germany at that time.

“You have to accept it if a people who suffers from national nervous fever and political ambition wants to suffer - all kinds of clouds and disturbances draw over the mind, in short, small attacks of stupidity: for example, with the Germans of today soon the anti-French stupidity, now the anti-Jewish, now the anti-Polish, now the Christian-Romantic, now the Wagnerian, now the Teutonic, now the Prussian (just look at these poor historians, these Sybel and Treitzschke and their thickly connected heads -) , and whatever they may be called, this little fogging of the German spirit and conscience. "(JGB 251)

Against the anti-Semites and nationalists , Nietzsche clearly presented the allegations against the Jews as wrong:

“It is certain that the Jews, if they wanted to - or if they were forced to do so, as the anti-Semites seem to want - could already have the preponderance, literally the rule over Europe; that they are not working towards it and making plans, either. In the meantime they want and wish rather, even with some intrusiveness, to be sucked in and sucked in by Europe in Europe, they thirst for it, finally somewhere, allowed, to be respected and to set a goal for nomadic life, the " eternal Jew " -; and one should pay attention to this tendency and urge (which perhaps itself already expresses a softening of the Jewish instincts) and meet it: for which it would perhaps be useful and cheap to expel the anti-Semitic screamers from the country. "(JGB 251)

The view that there are nations in Europe that are comparable to the Jews is erroneous. The nation-states have arisen historically and have an extremely different character. Nietzsche did not understand the term race in a biological sense, but as a cultural unit based on common values.

"What is called a" nation "in Europe today and is actually more of a res facta than nata [more of a made thing than a born] (yes, sometimes looks like a res ficta et picta [invented and painted thing] -) , is in any case something emerging, young, easily displaceable, not yet a race, let alone such an aere perennius [more stable than ore], as it is the Jew-kind: these "nations" should nevertheless face every hot-headed competition and Beware of hostility! "(JGB 251)

According to Nietzsche, Europe is facing a process of growing together at the end of the 19th century. Politicians who put national interests in the foreground and thereby create a "pathological alienation" of Europeans oversaw the trend of time. Your policy is only an "intermediate act". "It is Europe, the One Europe, whose soul pushes its way out, up and yearns through its diverse and impetuous art -" (JGB 256)

Elite thinking

Inequality belongs to nature, to original life. When great people like Leonardo , Napoleon or Goethe (JGB 256) would satisfy themselves in their works, they create great things for humanity. Man can only achieve satisfaction with himself if he realizes his true character. The philosophers of the future are "tempters" (JGB 42) and "people of experiments" (JGB 210) who, as "commanders and legislators", create new values. (JGB 211) Aristocratic differences in rank would have to be accepted by those who affirm life. For the gentleman it is natural that he would stand out from the “common” with a “ pathos of distance ” (JGB 257). Democratic egalitarianism is therefore decline and decline. Nietzsche turned against "the Nivellirer, these falsely named" free spirits "- as eloquent and finger-writing slaves of democratic taste and his" modern ideas "." wanting to be included because this is the basis of a “social structure”. (JGB 19) For him there are a multitude of “morals” that are to be examined by “comparison”. (JGB 186) Morals are "only a sign language of the affects" (JGB 187)

Christian morality, compassionate morality and also the English morality of utility (utilitarianism) weakened life, autonomous self-legislation, the chances of the future for the sake of denial, without creating anything positive that even the noble could affirm. Nietzsche polemicized above all against the morality of renunciation. With his criticism of morality and democracy, he by no means called for anarchy. This is just as anathema to him because of the licentiousness. On the other hand, he bet on a noble life, one of responsibility, hardship, the willingness to suffer for one's goals, and awe of one's own fate. “But the fact that their pace is still far too slow and sleepy for the more impatient, for the sick and addicts of the instinct mentioned, speaks for the increasingly furious howls, the more and more unveiled teeth baring of the anarchist dogs, which are now through the alleys of European culture wander: apparently in contrast to the peacefully hard-working democrats and revolutionary ideologues, even more so to the dumb philosophers and brotherhood enthusiasts who call themselves socialists and want the "free society", but in truth one with all of them in the thorough and instinctive hostility to any other form of society than that of the autonomous herd (up to the rejection of even the terms "master" and "servant" - ni dieu ni maître [no god, no master] is called a socialistic formula -); "(JGB 202)

“At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I state: egoism is part of the essence of the noble soul, I mean that immovable belief that a being like" we are "must be subject to other beings by nature and to oneself have to sacrifice to him. The noble soul accepts this fact of its egoism without any question marks, even without a feeling of hardness, compulsion, arbitrariness in it, rather like something that may be founded in the primordial law of things: - if it were looking for a name for it, it would say " it is righteousness itself "." (JGB 265)

Nietzsche challenges a person who is hard on himself and ready to bear his suffering and the consequences and to take responsibility. “... he should be the greatest, who can be the loneliest, the most hidden, the most deviant, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, the abundance of will: that is exactly what is meant to mean greatness, just as much as whole, just as far than can be full ”. (JGB 212)

Fine morality

In morality, Nietzsche called for the categories of “ good ” and “ bad ” to be overcome towards a morality that is forward-looking and which he called “noble morality”. Noble morality is only realized in an aristocracy. This requires the "pathos of distance." (JGB 257) For the free spirit, loneliness is a virtue. (JGB 284) He is out of date, a lonely wanderer, detached from traditional values, he is silent about what really drives him. (JGB 44) Only aristocratic people who are self-confident enough to glorify themselves are value-creating. The gentleman thinks in the category of the above and below, the hierarchy. His yardstick is good and bad. The slave man, on the other hand, who is fearful and skeptical, follows the standard of good and bad because he sees this as a means of improving his situation.

"In the foreground is the feeling of abundance, the power that wants to overflow, the happiness of the high tension, the awareness of a wealth that wants to give and give away: - Even the noble person helps the unfortunate, but not or almost not out of pity, but more from an urge generated by the abundance of power. [...] Belief in oneself, pride in oneself, basic enmity and irony against "selflessness" are just as much a part of noble morality as a slight disdain and caution for compassion and the "warm heart". "(JGB 260 )

“It must go against their pride, even against their taste, if their truth is still to be a truth for everyone: what was previously the secret wish and the deepest meaning of all dogmatic endeavors. ´My judgment is my judgment: it is not easy for someone else to do that - says such a philosopher of the future. One has to get rid of the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. 'Good' is no longer good when the neighbor puts it in their mouth. And how could there even be a 'common good'! The word contradicts itself: what can be mean always has little value. "(JGB p. 60)

In the recognition of moral norms, the natural drive to cruelty is directed inwards, against itself. There is a drive shift. Entrepreneurship, boldness and predatory behavior would be replaced by self-regulation, self-sacrifice and altruism. The extreme of the unnatural is asceticism , in which life is directed against life itself. "Almost everything that we call" higher culture "is based on the spiritualization and deepening of cruelty - this is my sentence; that "wild beast" has not been killed at all, it lives, it blossoms, it has only - deified itself. "(JGB 229)

The gentleman take responsibility for his life. Suffering is a condition of life that arises from nature. Therefore, the strong, who is not shaped by the effeminate pity culture, can endure suffering without quarrel. It is the dilemma of the noble person that the will to power brings with it. Abolishing suffering, as Schopenhauer, Buddhism, Christianity, the democrats or the socialists wanted, would mean that people would only remain spectators. Such ideas are only negative. The noble morality demands that the willingness to suffer is increased in order to create something special. This is the Dionysian element of the will to power. The new philosophers had the task of "teaching man the future of man as his will, as dependent on a human will, and to prepare great ventures and total attempts at discipline and chastisement." (JGB 203)

“A man who says: 'I like that, I take it as my own and want to protect it and defend it against everyone'; a man who can lead a cause, make a decision, be true to a thought, hold on to a woman, punish and prostrate a daring; a man who has his anger and his sword, and to whom the weak, suffering, afflicted, even animals like to fall and belong by nature, in short a man who is lord of nature - if such a man has pity, now! This pity has value! "(JGB 293)

Against the cardinal virtues of Plato, Nietzsche set four virtues of his own that the noble mind must possess, "courage, insight, compassion, solitude" (JGB 284). He also recommended proud serenity and "that mischievous and cheerful vice" of courtesy.

reception

Rudolf Steiner dealt with Nietzsche as early as 1889. He got his access to his work through the Beyond Good and Evil . He agreed with many thoughts. He commented: “'Beyond Good and Evil' was the first book I read from him. I was both captivated and repelled by this way of looking at things. I found it difficult to get along with Nietzsche. I loved his style, I loved his boldness; But I definitely didn't love the way Nietzsche spoke about the deepest problems without consciously delving into them in spiritual experience. "

In his Philosophy of As If, Hans Vaihinger made direct reference to Nietzsche's fictionalism in his final chapter , which is entitled: “Nietzsche and his doctrine of the consciously wanted appearance ('The will to appear')".

Ernst Troeltsch saw in Nietzsche's atheism a deep tension to an " enthusiastic piety". In an essay on atheistic ethics he wrote about Nietzsche in 1895: “Then there is no morality minus religion, but then the new morality rises beyond good and evil, which with full consciousness draws completely new consequences from the new ground. He in particular tirelessly mocked people who want to be educated enough not to have a religion, but at the same time are lazy enough to keep a moral of altruism that no longer has any foundation. "

Well-known psychologists discussed the importance of Nietzsche for their subject in the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association at the beginning of the 20th century. Alfred Adler said in 1908 that "of all the great philosophers who have left us something, Nietzsche is closest to our way of thinking". Freud noted in 1910:

"A. Pick recently (on the psychology of forgetting in the mentally and mentally ill, archive for criminal anthropology and criminalistics by H. Gross) compiled a number of authors who appreciate the influence of active factors on memory and - more or less clearly - recognize the contribution which the striving to defend against displeasure does. However, none of us has been able to present the phenomenon and its psychological justification so exhaustively and so impressively as Nietzsche in one of his aphorisms (Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter II, 68): »I did that, says my“ memory ”. I can't have done that, says my pride and remains inexorable. Finally the memory gives way. ""

However, Adler's approach to viewing sexuality as a factor in the will to power was criticized by Freud because this view of the world did not take into account the love factor.

“The image of life that emerges from Adler's system is based entirely on the instinct of aggression. One might be astonished that such a bleak worldview received attention at all; but one must not forget that humanity, subjugated by the yoke of its sexual needs, is ready to accept anything if one only offers it to "overcome sexuality". "

In the Nietzsche reception under National Socialism , individual statements by Nietzsche were arbitrarily misused to underpin the Nazi ideology , despite the contrary overall statement . This also included the thesis of “Jewish slave morality” worked out in Beyond Good and Evil, although the fact that Christianity, according to Nietzsche, had only strengthened the idea of ​​social equilibrium was deliberately ignored. Martin Staemmler asserted about the Jews : “With fierce hatred they take the most selected race with the 'slave morality of a weak and submissive, humble and cunning race (Nietzsche): create through a systematic revaluation of all values, in the fight against all instincts and nature they consciously a counterpart to morality, they morally poison a people. ”It was claimed that Nietzsche wanted to strengthen the German way and that he was a pioneer of the racial idea. On the other hand, there were National Socialists who had recognized Nietzsche's hostility to anti-Semitism and warned against using his writings for their own ideology, for example the völkisch thought leader Theodor Fritsch in a review from 1897, who in Beyond Good and Evil a “glorification of Jews ”and a“ harsh condemnation of anti-Semitism ”.

Martin Heidegger interpreted the concept of the will to power as a metaphysical basic category. This could not be “psychology, not even a psychology supported by physiology.” On the other hand, there is the direct contradiction of Walter Kaufmann: “In his understanding, the will to power is first and above all the key concept of a psychological hypothesis.” Wolfgang Müller -Lauter criticizes Heidegger's Nietzsche interpretation for not having found access to the plurality of the will to power (JGB 19) and for reducing this to an "originally simple" thing that was not to be found in Nietzsche. "Heidegger's engagement with Nietzsche remains limited to aspects that are productive for his construction of the history of metaphysics."

Adorno saw in Nietzsche the negation of the Enlightenment morality which he criticized. His special achievement lay in the fact that he had worked out the connection between morality and rule. For him, Nietzsche deserves the merit of not having covered up the impossibility of "reasoning to put forward a fundamental argument against the murder, but shouting it all over the world." On the other hand, Adorno strictly rejected the philosophy of gentlemen's morality. For him, Nietzsche contradicted himself in that, like Kant, he wanted to make a general principle the basis of morality. "Kant's principle, to do everything according to the maxim of his will as one that could at the same time have itself as a general legislative object," is also the secret of the superman. His will is no less despotic than the categorical imperative. "

Arthur C. Danto commented on Nietzsche's understanding of language: “Nietzsche belongs to a very interesting class of thinkers, including Cassirer and Whorf , who are defined by the belief that we ourselves get our idea of ​​the structure of reality from structure our language so that different structures of the real underlie different grammatical structures and that a change in grammar implies a change in the world, “Language is a prison and the best way to get out of prison is it to recognize the character of the language.

Volker Gerhardt points out that for Nietzsche the “pathos of distance” is a prerequisite for people to overcome themselves and for value creation in the Nietzean sense. It is the basic ethical rule for the sovereign person of the future with which he can find himself. Gerhard also emphasized that Nietzsche's perspectivism has a parallel in Whitehead's metaphysics, in which each subject as an organism assumes its own subjective perspective, at the same time as part of nature is integrated into the totality of all perspectives.

For Friedrich Kaulbach , Nietzsche's perspectivism results in a different claim to truth. Nietzsche did not ask about the truth of knowledge, but about "truth of meaning". As a philosophical psychologist, Nietzsche presented a "perspective philosophy of the philosophers", "a draft of a perspective of a world in which a life and its position of being can be recognized which require this perspective."

John Richardson noted that Nietzsche's perspectivism presupposes an ontology, since there must be someone or something, a being, to take the perspective. He took the view that Nietzsche's interpretationism implies that all centers of power in the world interpret and thereby take a perspective. Every instinct is thus directed towards a goal. The will to power can be understood as a pattern of activity.

Giorgio Colli referred to the easily overlooked motif of the “mask”, which Nietzsche treated rather incidentally in Beyond Good and Evil. "Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy - that is a hermit judgment:" There is something arbitrary about the fact that he stopped here, looked back, looked around, that he did not dig deeper here and put the spade aside - it is also something suspicious about it. ”Every philosophy also hides a philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding place, every word also a mask. ”(JGB 289) Superficially, Nietzsche presented the historical background of morality as an instrument of rule, the mistakes of the philosophers and what is noble. In fact, he was concerned with the psychological constitution of the noble people. "The original inwardness with which an individual feels the world that surrounds him and reacts accordingly, that is what interests Nietzsche." According to Colli, the elegant arises through the distance, through the suffering that separates. The gentleman hides himself in solitude, in that he does not allow others to participate in his true thinking. In solitude the genteel attains cleanliness. The loneliness protects him from drowning in the community. The gentleman has no need, has no need to present himself publicly. "Anyone who is noble doesn't feel the need to be, whoever feels the need to be is not noble."

literature

expenditure

See Nietzsche edition for general information.

• In the by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari founded Critical Edition is beyond good and evil found in
  • Department VI, Volume 2 (together with Zur Genealogie der Moral ). ISBN 978-3-11-005175-9 . A follow-up report , i.e. H. critical apparatus, is still missing for this volume.
• The same text is provided by the critical study edition in volume 5 (together with Zur Genealogie der Moral and with an afterword by Giorgio Colli). This is also published as a single volume under ISBN 978-3-423-30155-8 . The associated apparatus can be found in the commentary volume (KSA 14), pp. 377–382.
• The current edition by Reclam , ISBN 3-15-007114-3, is also based on this edition . It contains an afterword by Volker Gerhardt .

Secondary literature

• Günter Abel : Nietzsche. The dynamic of the will to power and the eternal return. 2nd Edition. de Gruyter, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-11-015191-X .
• Maudemarie Clark: Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. Cambridge 1990.
• Gilles Deleuze : Nietzsche et la philosophy. Paris 1962.
  • Nietzsche and Philosophy. Rogner and Bernhard, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-8077-0058-7 .
• Edith Düsing : Nietzsche's way of thinking. Theology - Darwinism - Nihilism. Fink, Paderborn / Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7705-4254-3 .
• Laurence Lampert: Nietzsche's task. An interpretation of "Beyond Good and Evil". Yale University, London 2001.
• Philipp Silvester Mauch: Nietzsche on the whole. Immanence and difference in the beyond of good and evil. A conceptual analysis. Dissertation. Munich 2009 ( PDF; 2.4 MB ).
• Lars Niehaus: The Problem of Morality: On the Relationship between Criticism and Historical Consideration in Nietzsche's Late Work . Königshausen u. Neumann, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3826041327 .
• Henning Ottmann : Politics and Philosophy at Nietzsche. 2nd improved edition. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999, ISBN 3-11-014770-X .
• Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual. Life - work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-476-01330-8 .
• Andreas Urs Sommer : Commentary on Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil (= Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Hg.): Historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works , Vol. 5/1). de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-029307-4
• Marcus Born (Hrsg.): Friedrich Nietzsche: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Berlin (Akademie Verlag) [Classics Explaining, Vol. 48], Berlin 2014.
• Winfried Schröder : Moral Nihilism. Types of radical moral criticism from the sophists to Nietzsche. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2002, ISBN 3-7728-2232-0 .
• Gerhard Schweppenhäuser : Nietzsche's Overcoming of Morality. On the dialectic of moral criticism in “Beyond Good and Evil” and in the “Genealogy of Morals”. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1988, ISBN 3-88479-364-0 .
• Michael Steinmann: The Ethics of Friedrich Nietzsche. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-016440-X .
• Paul van Tongeren : The moral of Nietzsche's moral criticism. Study on “Beyond Good and Evil”. Bouvier, Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-416-02030-8 .

Web links

• Text at Nietzsche-Source
• Text in German on zeno.org
• Estate in the Nietzsche Channel (texts in German)
• Brian Leiter:  Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volker Gerhardt : "Philosophy as fate", epilogue in: Nietzsche: Beyond good and bad. Prelude to a philosophy of the future. Reclam, Stuttgart 1988, pp. 223-238, here 226
2. ↑ Quotations from Beyond Good and Evil are given after the symbol JGB and the number of the aphorism, so that they can be found in different editions. The text corresponds to the critical study edition
3. ↑ KSA 5, 421
4. ^ Mazzino Montinari: Nietzsche. An introduction, de Gruyter, Berlin 1991, structure of the table of contents, p. XV
5. ↑ Volker Gerhard: The sparks of the free spirit. Recent essays on Nietzsche's philosophy of the future, de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, 108
6. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Post-trafficked fragments, autumn 1884 - autumn 1885, review of the 7th section, volume 4, half volume 2, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, KGW VII 4/2, de Gruyter, Berlin 1985, 62-63
7. ^ Laurence Lampert: Nietzsche's task. An Interpretation of 'Beyond Good and Evil' , Yale University, London 2001, 5
8. ↑ KSA 14, 345
9. ^ Walter Arnold Kaufmann: Nietzsche: Philosopher - Psychologist - Antichrist. Translated from the 4th edition in 1974, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2nd edition 1988, 108
10. ↑ KSA 14, 345 and letter to R. von Seydlitz of October 26, 1886, KSB 7, 270
11. ^ Letter to Georg Brandes dated April 10, 1888
12. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: Postponed fragments autumn 1884 - autumn 1885, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, KGW VII1, de Gruyter, Berlin 1974, IX
13. ^ Laurence Lampert: Nietzsche's task. An Interpretation of 'Beyond Good and Evil' , Yale University, London 2001, 8
14. ↑ Nietzsche himself refers to this in the estate of Herbst 1885-Herbst 1886, 2 [108]: “That every elevation of man brings with it the overcoming of narrower interpretations, that every strengthening and expansion of power that has been achieved opens up new perspectives and means believing in new horizons - this is possible through my 'writings'. "
15. ^ Estate H 1885 - H 1886 2 [157]
16. ↑ Papers Herbst 1885-Herbst 1886, 2 [108]
17. ^ Estate autumn 1885 – autumn 1886 2 [84]
18. ^ Wolfgang Röd: Nietzsche. In: ders .: (Ed.): History of Philosophy, Volume XIII, Beck, Munich 2002, 59–112, here 84
19. ↑ See: Alfred North Whitehead: Process and Reality and the evidence given there
20. ↑ Nachlass Sommer-Herbst 1884 26 [414]: “Our valuations determine which things we accept and how we accept them. But these valuations are given in and regulated by our will to power. "
21. ↑ Posthumous Writings. August to September 1885, KGW VII 40 [61]
22. ↑ The Origin of Moral Sensations , 1877
23. ^ Henning Ottmann: Politics and Philosophy in Nietzsche. de Gruyter, 2nd improved edition 1999, 205
24. ↑ z. B. quoted in Wolfgang Röd: Nietzsche. In: ders .: (Ed.): History of Philosophy, Volume XIII, Beck, Munich 2002, 59–112, here 81
25. ↑ KSA 11, estate June-July 1885 38 [12], pp. 610–611
26. ↑ Volker Gerhardt: From the will to power. Anthropology and metaphysics of power using the exemplary case of Friedrich Nietzsche, Berlin 1996, pp. 271ff and 304ff
27. ^ Estate H 1885 - H 1886 2 [139]
28. ↑ Wolfgang Müller-Lauter: Nietzsche. His philosophy of opposites and the opposites of his philosophy, Berlin 1971, 30ff; see. also Günter Abel: Nietzsche. The dynamic of the will to power and the eternal return . de Gruyter, 2nd edition, Berlin 1998, 22ff
29. ↑ Nachlass H 1885 - H 1886 2 [151], see also 2 [148]
30. ↑ see Fröhliche Wissenschaft FW 125 and Also sprach Zarathustra, Za II From the compassionate
31. ↑ Winfried Schröder: Moral Nihilism. Radical moral criticism from the sophists to Nietzsche. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, 30
32. ↑ Werner Stegmaier: Philosophy of Orientation, de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, 543
33. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: De Theognide Megarensi . In: Critical Complete Edition (KGW), ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari , Vol. I 3, de Gruyter, Berlin 2006, pp. 420–462.
34. ↑ Winfried Schröder: Moral Nihilism. Radical moral criticism from the sophists to Nietzsche. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, 34-37
35. ↑ A similar chain of arguments can already be found in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches MA I, 39: "One after the other makes people responsible for their effects, then for their actions, then for their motives and finally for their being."
36. ↑ Josef Simon: Das Judentum und Europa bei Nietzsche, Heidelberg 1998, esp. 112–125
37. ↑ Werner Stegmaier: Nietzsche, the Jews and Europe. In: Werner Stegmaier (Ed.): Europa-Philosophie, de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, 67–92, here 67
38. ↑ Ralf Wilter: Europe in Nietzsche's thinking, 91 FN 201
39. ^ Giorgio Colli: Distance and Pathos. EVA, Hamburg 1993, 99/100
40. ↑ Rudolf Steiner quoted from: Richard Frank Krummel: Spread and effect of Nietzsche's work in the German-speaking area up to the year of death. de Gruyter, 2nd edition Berlin 1988, 174
41. ↑ Hans Vaihinger: The Philosophy of Als Ob, Berlin 1911, 771
42. ^ Ernst Troeltsch: Collected Writings Volume 2 (On the religious situation, philosophy of religion and ethics), Mohr, Tübingen 1913, 530-531
43. ↑ Quoted from: Reinhard Gasser: Nietzsche and Freud. de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, 49
44. ↑ Sigmund Freud: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben, 3rd increased edition, Berlin 1910, GW 4, pp. 77-78 - Freud was wrong when specifying the main part, which is correctly the 4th, which contains the aphorism 68; quoted from: Reinhard Gasser: Nietzsche and Freud, de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, 43
45. ^ Sigmund Freud: On the history of the psychoanalytical movement GW 10, 102; quoted from: Reinhard Gasser: Nietzsche and Freud. de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, 66
46. ^ Martin Staemmler: Rassenpflege im Völkischen Staat, second increased and improved edition, JF Lehmann, Munich 1933; quoted from: Thomas Mittmann: From the "favorite" to the "original enemy" of the Jews: the anti-Semitic reception of Nietzsche in Germany until the end of National Socialism. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, 110
47. ↑ Thomas Mittmann: From the "favorite" to the "original enemy" of the Jews: the anti-Semitic Nietzsche reception in Germany until the end of National Socialism. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, 90–91; Mazzino Montinari: Reading Nietzsche, de Gruyter, Berlin 1982, 169
48. ^ Martin Heidegger: Nietzsche. Pfullingen, 4th edition 1961, 55
49. ^ Walter Arnold Kaufmann: Nietzsche: Philosopher - Psychologist - Antichrist. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1988, 237-238; see also: ders .: Nietzsche as the first great psychologist, in: Nietzsche - Studies 7, 1978, 269
50. ↑ Wolfgang Müller-Lauter: Heidegger and Nietzsche. de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, 32; The address mentioned can be found in the Heidegger Complete Edition , Volume 43: Nietzsche: The will to power as art (winter semester 1936/37), Ed .: B. Heimbüchel, 1985, 53–66; Müller-Lauter concludes Paul van Tongeren's assessment of the multiplicity: The moral of Nietzsche's moral criticism. Study on Nietzsche's “Beyond Good and Evil”. Bouvier, Bonn 1989, 243, an (p. 156).
51. ↑ Dialectic of Enlightenment, 140
52. ↑ Dialectic of Enlightenment, 141
53. ^ Arthur C. Danto: Nietzsche and the semantic nihilism, in: Alfredo Guzzoni (Ed.): 100 years of philosophical Nietzsche reception, Athenaeum, Frankfurt 1991, 140–154, here 145
54. ^ Volker Gerhard: Pathos and distance. Studies on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Reclam, Stuttgart 1988, (Introduction, 5–11)
55. ↑ Volker Gerhard: The perspective of perspectivism. In: Nietzsche Studies 18, 1989
56. ↑ Michael Hampe in: Michael Hampe and Helmut Maaßen (eds.): Materials on Whitehead's "Process and Reality": Volume 1: Process, Feeling and Space-Time. Suhrkamp. Frankfurt 1991, 22-25 and George Herbert Mead : Analysis of Whitehead's idea of ​​perspectivism. In: Michael Hampe, Helmut Maaßen, Dominic Kaegi and Lalitha Maaßen-Venkateswaran (eds.): Materials on Whitehead's "Process and Reality": Volume 2: The Gifford Lectures and their Interpretation. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1991, 89-99
57. ^ Friedrich Kaulbach: Philosophy of Perspectivism I. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1990, 20
58. ^ Friedrich Kaulbach: Philosophy of Perspectivism I. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1990, 221
59. ^ John Richardson: Nietzsche's System. OUP, Oxford 1996, 12
60. ^ John Richardson: Nietzsche's System. OUP, Oxford 1996, 36-38
61. ^ Giorgio Colli: Distance and Pathos. EVA, Hamburg 1993, 105-108
62. ^ Giorgio Colli: Distance and Pathos. EVA, Hamburg 1993, 106
63. ^ Giorgio Colli: Distance and Pathos. EVA, Hamburg 1993, 107