Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche (most life changing books txt) 📕

It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for one’s neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must be mercilessly called to account, and brought to judgment; just as the aesthetics of “disinterested contemplation,” under which the emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself a good conscience. There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments “for others” and “not for myself,” for one not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and for one asking promptly: “Are they not perhaps⁠—deceptions?”⁠—That they please⁠—him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also the mere spectator⁠—that is still no argument in their favour, but just calls for caution. Let us therefore be cautious!

At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays, seen from every position, the erroneousness of the world in which we think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light upon: we find proof after proof thereof, which would fain allure us into surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the “nature of things.” He, however, who makes thinking itself, and consequently “the spirit,” responsible for the falseness of the world⁠—an honourable exit, which every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of⁠—he who regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, as falsely deduced, would have at least good reason in the end to become distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto been playing upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give that it would not continue to do what it has always been doing? In all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them honest answers: for example, whether it be “real” or not, and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same description. The belief in “immediate certainties” is a moral naivete which does honour to us philosophers; but⁠—we have now to cease being “merely moral” men! Apart from morality, such belief is a folly which does little honour to us! If in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust is regarded as the sign of a “bad character,” and consequently as an imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a right to “bad character,” as the being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth⁠—he is now under obligation to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.⁠—Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which philosophers struggle against being deceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world. So much must be conceded: there could have been no life at all except upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away altogether with the “seeming world”⁠—well, granted that you could do that⁠—at least nothing of your “truth” would thereby remain! Indeed, what is it that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an essential opposition of “true” and “false”? Is it not enough to suppose degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones of semblance⁠—different valeurs, as the painters say? Why might not the world which concerns us⁠—be a fiction? And to anyone who suggested: “But to a fiction belongs an originator?”⁠—might it not be bluntly replied: Why? May not this “belong” also belong to the fiction? Is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical towards the subject, just as towards the predicate and object? Might not the philosopher elevate himself above faith in grammar? All respect to governesses, but is it not time that philosophy should renounce governess-faith?

O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in “the truth,” and in the search for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely⁠—“il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien”⁠—I wager he finds nothing!

Supposing that nothing else is “given” as real but our world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other “reality” but just that of our impulses⁠—for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another:⁠—are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is “given” does not suffice, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or “material”) world? I do not mean as an illusion, a “semblance,” a “representation” (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves⁠—as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, in which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards branches off and develops itself in organic processes (naturally also, refines and debilitates)⁠—as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic functions, including self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and change of matter, are still synthetically united with one another⁠—as a primary form of life?⁠—In the end, it is not only permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the conscience of logical method. Not to assume several kinds of causality, so long as the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so): that is a morality