The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All...

Any kind of action is imperfect in proportion as it has been willed or conscious. The philosophers of antiquity were the greatest duffers in practice, "because they condemned themselves" theoretically to dufferdom,.... In practice everything resolved itself into theatricalness: and he who saw through it, as Pyrrho did, for instance, thought as everybody did—that is to say, that in goodness and uprightness "paltry people" were far superior to philosophers.

Result: In practical life, in patience, goodness, and mutual assistance, paltry people were above them:—this is something like the judgment Dostoiewsky or Tolstoy claims for his muzhiks: they are more philosophical in practice, they are more courageous in their way of dealing with the exigencies of life....

A criticism of the philosopher.—Philosophers and moralists merely deceive themselves when they imagine that they escape from decadence by opposing it. That lies beyond their wills: and however little they may be aware of the fact, it is generally discovered, subsequently that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.

Let us examine the philosophers of Greece—Plato, for instance. He it was who separated the instincts from the polis, from the love of contest, from military efficiency, from art, beauty, the mysteries, and the belief in tradition and in ancestors.... He was the seducer of the nobles: he himself seduces through the roturier Socrates.... He denied all the first principles of the "noble Greek" of sterling worth; he made dialectics an everyday practice, conspired with the tyrants, dabbled in politics for the future, and was the example of a man whose instincts were the example of a man whose instincts were most perfectly separated from tradition. He is profound and passionate in everything that is anti-Hellenic....

To what extent do dialectics and the faith in reason rest upon moral prejudices? With Plato we are as the temporary inhabitants of an intelligible world of goodness, still in possession of a bequest from former times: divine dialectics taking its root in goodness leads to everything good (it follows, therefore, that it must lead "backwards"). Even Descartes had a notion of the fact that, according to a thoroughly Christian and moral attitude of mind, which includes a belief in a good God as the Creator of all things, the truthfulness of God guarantees the judgments of our senses for us. But for this religious sanction and warrant of our senses and our reason, whence should we obtain our right to trust in existence? That thinking must be a measure of reality,—that what cannot be the subject of thought, cannot exist,—is a coarse non plus ultra of a moral blind confidence (in the essential principle of truth at the root of all things); this in itself is a mad assumption which our experience contradicts every minute. We cannot think of anything precisely as it is....

The real philosophers of Greece are those which came before Socrates (with Socrates something changes). They are all distinguished men, they take their stand away from the people and from usage; they have travelled; they are earnest to the point of sombreness, their eyes are calm, and they are not unacquainted with the business of state and diplomacy. They anticipated all the great concepts which coming sages were to have concerning things in general: they themselves represented these concepts, they made systems out of themselves. Nothing run give a higher idea of Greek intellect than this sudden fruitfulness in types, than this involuntary completeness in the drawing up of all the great possibilities of the philosophical ideal. I can see only one original figure in those that came afterwards: a late arrival but necessarily the last—Pyrrho the nihilist. His instincts were opposed to the influences which had become ascendant in the mean-time the Socratic school, Plato, and the artistic optimism of Heraclitus. (Pyrrho goes back to Democritus via Protagoras....)

Wise weariness: Pyrrho. To live humbly among the humble. Devoid of pride. To live in the vulgar way; to honour and believe what every one believes. To be on one's guard against science and intellect, and against everything that puffs one out. ... To be simply patient in the extreme, careless and mild;—ὰπάθεια or, better still, πραῢτης. A Buddhist for Greece, bred amid the tumult of the Schools; born alter his time; weary; an example of the protest of weariness against the eagerness of dialecticians; the incredulity of the tired man in regard to the importance of everything. He had seen Alexander; he had seen the Indian penitents. To such late-arrivals and creatures of great subtlety, everything lowly, poor, and idiotic, is seductive. It narcoticises: it gives them relaxation (Pascal). On the other hand, they mix with the crowd, and get confounded with the rest. These weary creatures need warmth.... To overcome contradiction; to do away with contests; to have no will to excel in any way; to deny the Greek instincts (Pyrrho lived with his sister, who was a midwife.) To rig out wisdom in such a way that it no longer distinguishes; to give it the ragged mantle of poverty; to perform the lowest offices, and to go to market and sell sucking-pigs.... Sweetness, clearness, indifference; no need of virtues that require attitudes; to be equal to all even in virtue: final conquest of one's self, final indifference.

Pyrrho and Epicurus;—two forms of Greek decadence; they are related in their hatred of dialectics and all theatrical virtues. These two things together were then called philosophy; Pyrrho and Epicurus intentionally held that which they loved in low esteem; they chose common and even contemptible names for it, and they represented a state in which one is neither ill, healthy, lively, nor dead.... Epicurus was more naïf, more idyllic, more grateful; Pyrrho had more experience of the world, had travelled more, and was more nihilistic. His life was a protest against the great doctrine of Identity (Happiness = Virtue = Knowledge). The proper way of living is not promoted by science: wisdom does not make "wise." ... The proper way of living does not desire happiness, it turns away from happiness....

The war against the "old faith," as Epicurus waged it, was, strictly speaking, a struggle against pre-existing Christianity—the struggle against a world then already gloomy, moralised, acidified throughout with feelings of guilt, and grown old and sick.

Not the "moral corruption" of antiquity, but precisely its moral infectedness was the prerequisite which enabled Christianity to become its master. Moral fanaticism (in short: Plato) destroyed paganism by transvaluing its values and poisoning its innocence. We ought at last to understand that what was then destroyed was higher than what prevailed! Christianity grew on the soil of psychological corruption, and could only take root in rotten ground.

Science: as a disciplinary measure or as an instinct—I see a decline of the instincts in Greek philosophers: otherwise they could not have been guilty of the profound error of regarding the conscious state as the more valuable state. The intensity of consciousness stands in the inverse ratio to the ease and speed of cerebral transmission. Greek philosophy upheld the opposite view, which is always the sign of weakened instincts.

We must, in sooth, seek perfect life there where it is least conscious (that is to say, there where it is least aware of its logic, its reasons, its means, its intentions, and its utility). The return to the facts of common sense, the facts of the common man and of "paltry people." Honesty and intelligence stored up for generations of people who are quite unconscious of their principles, and who even have some fear of principles. It is not reasonable to desire a reasoning virtue. ... A philosopher is compromised by such a desire.

When morality—that is to say, refinement, prudence, bravery, and equity—have been stored up in the same way, thanks to the moral efforts of a whole succession of generations, the collective power of this hoard of virtue projects its rays even into that sphere where honesty is most seldom present—the sphere of intellect. When a thing becomes conscious, it is the sign of a state of ill-ease in the organism; something new has got to be found, the organism is not satisfied or adapted, it is subject to distress, suspense, and it is hypersensitive—precisely all this is consciousness....

Gennius lies in the instincts; goodness does too. One only acts perfectly when one acts instinctively. Even from the moral point of view all thinking which is conscious is merely a process of groping, and in the majority of cases an attack on morality. Scientific honesty is always sacrificed when a thinker begins to reason: let any one try the experiment: put the wisest man in the balance, and then let him discourse upon morality....

The struggle against Socrates, Plato, and all the Socratic schools, proceeds from the profound instinct that man is not made better when he is shown that virtue may be demonstrated or based upon reason.... This in the end is the niggardly fact, it was the agonal instinct in all these born dialecticians, which drove them to glorify their personal abilities as the highest of all qualities, and to represent every other form of goodness as conditioned by them. The anti-scientific spirit of all this "philosophy": it will never admit that it is not right.

This is extraordinary. From its very earliest beginnings, Greek philosophy carries on a struggle against science with the weapons of a theory of knowledge, especially of scepticism; and why is this? It is always in favour of morality.... (Physicists and medical men are hated.) Socrates, Aristippus, the Megarian school, the Cynics, Epicurus and Pyrrho—a general onslaught upon knowledge in favour of morality.... (Hatred of dialectics also.) There is still a problem to be solved: they approach sophistry in order to be rid of science. On the other hand, the physicists are subjected to such an extent that, among their first principles, they include the theory of truth and of real being: for instance, the atom, the four elements (juxtaposition of being, in order to explain its multiformity and its transformations). Contempt of objectivity in interests is taught: return to practical interest, and to the personal utility of all knowledge....

The struggle against science is directed at: (1) its pathos (objectivity); (2) its means (that is to say, at its utility); (3) its results (which are considered childish). It is the same struggle which is taken up later on by the Church in the name of piety: the Church inherited the whole arsenal of antiquity for her war with science. The theory of knowledge played the same part in the affair as it did in Kant's or the Indians' case. There is no desire whatever to be troubled with it, a free hand is wanted for the "purpose" that is envisaged.

This is how decadence manifests itself: the instinct of solidarity is so degenerate that solidarity itself gets to be regarded as tyranny: no authority or solidarity is brooked, nobody any longer desires to fall in with the rank and file, and to adopt its ignobly slow pace. The slow movement which is the tempo of science is generally hated, as are also the scientific man's indifference in regard to getting on, his long breath, and his impersonal attitude.

At bottom, morality is hostile to science: Socrates was so already too—and the reason is, that science considers certain things important which have no relation whatsoever to "good" and "evil," and which therefore reduce the gravity of our feelings concerning "good" and "evil." What morality requires is that the whole of a man should serve it with all his power: it considers it waste on the part of a creature that can ill afford waste, when a man earnestly troubles his head about stars or plants. That is why science very quickly declined in Greece, once Socrates had inoculated scientific work with the disease of morality. The mental attitudes reached by a Democritus, a Hippocrates, and a Thucydides, have not been reached a second time.—

The problem of the philosopher and of the scientific man.—The influence of age; depressing habits (sedentary study à la Kant; over-work; inadequate nourishment of the brain; reading). A more essential question still: is it not already perhaps a symptom of decadence when thinking tends to establish generalities?

Objectivity regarded as the disintegration of the will (to be able to remain as detached as possible ...). This presupposes a tremendous adiaphora in regard to the strong passions: a kind of isolation, an exceptional position, opposition to the normal passions.

Type: desertion of home-country emigrants go ever greater distances afield; growing exoticism; the voice of the old imperative dies away;—and the continual question "whither?" ("happiness") is a sign of emancipation from forms of organisation, a sign of breaking loose from everything.

Problem: is the man of science more of a decadent symptom than the philosopher?—as a whole scientific man is not, cut loose from everything, only a part of his being is consecrated exclusively to the service of knowledge and disciplined to maintain a special attitude and point of view; in his department he is in need of all the virtues of a strong race, of robust health, of great severity, manliness and intelligence. He is rather a symptom of the great multiformity of culture than of the effeteness of the latter. The decadent scholar is a bad scholar. Whereas the decadent philosopher has always been reckoned hitherto as the typical philosopher.