Twilight of the Idols Or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer [Hardcover]

 

 

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Twilight of the Idols: How to Philosophize with a Hammer was published in 1888.

Nietzsche on the necessity of cheerfulness:

"To stay cheerful when involved in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is not an inconsiderable art: yet what could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds in which high spirits play no part. Only excess of strength is proof of strength. - A revaluation of all values, this question-mark so black, so huge it casts a shadow over him who sets it up - such a destiny of a task compels one every instant to run out into the sunshine so as to shake off a seriousness grown all too oppressive. Every expedient for doing so is justified, every occasion a joyful occasion."

On Christian hatred of the passions:

"Formerly one made war on passion itself on account of the folly inherent in it: one conspired for its extermination - all the old moral monsters are unanimous that - `il faut tuer les passions.' The most famous formula for doing this is contained in the New Testament, in the Sermon on the Mount. There, for example, it is said, with reference to sexuality, `if the eye offend thee, pluck it out': fortunately no Christian follows this prescription. To exterminate the passions and desires merely in order to do away with their folly and its unpleasant consequences - this itself seems to us today merely an acute form of folly. We no longer admire dentists who pull out teeth to stop them hurting.

The church combats the passions with excision in every sense of the word. Its practice, its `cure', is castration. But to attack the passions at their root is to attack Life at its roots. The practice of the church is hostile to Life."

On systematizers:

"I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity."

On historians:

"The historian looks backwards; at last he also believes backwards."

On Socrates:

"With Socrates Greek taste undergoes a change in favour of dialectics: what is really happening when that happens? It is above all the defeat of a nobler taste; with dialectics the rabble gets on top. Before Socrates, the dialectical manner was repudiated in good society: it was regarded as a form of bad manners, one was compromised by it. Young people were warned against it. And all such presentation of one's reasons was treated with mistrust.

Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons exposed in this fashion. It is indecent to display all one's goods. What has first to have itself proved is of little value. Wherever authority is still part of accepted usage and one does not `give reasons' but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: he is laughed at, he is not taken seriously. - Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously."

"I have intimated the way in which Socrates exercised fascination: he seemed to be a physician, a saviour. Socrates was a misunderstanding: the entire morality of improvement, the Christian included, has been a misunderstanding... The harshest daylight, rationality at any cost, life bright, cold, circumspect, conscious, without instinct, in opposition to the instincts, has itself been no more than a form of sickness - and by no means a way back to virtue, to health, to happiness... To have to combat one's instincts, that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one."

On Heraclitus and the nature of perception:

"I set apart with high reverence the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosopher crowd rejected the evidence of the senses because these showed plurality and change, he rejected their evidence because they showed things as if they possessed duration and unity. Heraclitus too was unjust to the senses, which lie neither in the way the Eleatics believe nor as he believed - they do not lie at all. It is what we make of their evidence that first introduces a lie into it, for example the lie of unity, the lie of materiality, of substance, of duration... `Reason' is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. (cf. The Invisible Gorilla by Dr. Christopher Chabris and Dr. Daniel Simons; and Sleights of Mind by Dr. Stephen L. Macknik and Dr. Susana Martinez-Conde)

In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie. Heraclitus will always be right in this, that `being' is an empty fiction. The `apparent' world is the only one: the `real' world has only been lyingly added."

On how the "real world" at last becomes a myth:

"History of an Error

I. The real world, attainable to the wise, the pious, the virtuous man - he dwells in it, he is it. (Oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, convincing. Transcription of the proposition `I, Plato, am the truth.')

II. The real world, unattainable for the moment, but promised to the wise, the pious, the virtuous man (to the sinner who repents) (Progress of the idea: it grows more refined, more enticing, more incomprehensible - it becomes a woman, it becomes Christian)

III. The real world, unattainable, undemonstrable, cannot be promised, but even when merely thought of a consolation, a duty, an imperative. (Fundamentally the same old sun, but shining through mist and scepticism; the idea grown sublime, pale, northerly, Konigsbergian.)

IV. The real world - unattainable? Unattained at any rate. And if unattained also unknown. Consequently also no consolation, no redemption, no duty: how could we have a duty towards something unknown? (The grey of dawn. First yawnings of reason. Cockcrow of positivism.)

V. The `real world' - an idea no longer of any use, not even a duty any longer - an idea grown useless, superfluous, consequently a refuted idea: let us abolish it! (Broad daylight; breakfast; return of cheerfulness and bon sens; Plato blushes for shame; all free spirits run riot)

VI. We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps?... But no! With the real world we have also abolished the apparent world! (Mid-day; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; zenith of mankind; incipit Zarathustra)"

On wisdom vs. "Knowledge":

"Once and for all, there is a great deal I do not want to know. Wisdom sets limits even to knowledge."

Polt's is an accessible, readable, but faithful translation of a powerful book that summarizes Nietzsche's main thoughts...

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