Décadence

1886 · Anticipates

Beyond Good and Evil · §240

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

Wagner and modern music heard as symptoms of a late, over-refined European nervousness.

I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner's overture to the Mastersinger: it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art, which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music as still living, in order that it may be understood:--it is an honour to Germans that such a pride did not miscalculate! What flavours and forces, what seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It impresses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitt…

Ich hörte, wieder einmal zum ersten Male - Richard Wagner's Ouverture zu den Meistersingern: das ist eine prachtvolle, überladene, schwere und späte Kunst, welche den Stolz hat, zu ihrem Verständniss zwei Jahrhunderte Musik als noch lebendig vorauszusetzen: - es ehrt die Deutschen, dass sich ein solcher Stolz nicht ver…

Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204

1886 · Anticipates

Beyond Good and Evil · §208

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

European nervous debility as physiological climate before the TI diagnosis of Socratic decadence.

When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic--I hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the objective spirit?--people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many, many questions... indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening…

Wenn heute ein Philosoph zu verstehen giebt, er sei kein Skeptiker, - ich hoffe, man hat Das aus der eben gegebenen Abschilderung des objektiven Geistes herausgehört? - so hört alle Welt das ungern; man sieht ihn darauf an, mit einiger Scheu, man möchte so Vieles fragen, fragen... ja, unter furchtsamen Horchern, wie es…

Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204

1887 · Comments on

The Joyful Science · §370 · What is Romanticism?

The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)

Romanticism versus Dionysian abundance: decadence as hunger mistaken for creativity.

_What is Romanticism?_—It will be remembered perhaps, at least among my friends, that at first I assailed the modern world with some gross errors and exaggerations, but at any rate with _hope_ in my heart. I recognised—who knows from what personal experiences?—the philosophical pessimism of the nineteenth century as the symptom of a higher power of thought, a more daring courage and a more triumphant _plenitude_ of life than had been characteristic of the eighteenth century, …

Sources: gutenberg:52881

1888 · Introduces

Twilight of the Idols · The Problem of Socrates §1

Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Socrates as decadent: the question of the value of life becomes an objection to the wise.

In all ages the wisest have always agreed in their judgment of life: _it is no good._ At all times and places the same words have been on their lips,—words full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of hostility to life. Even Socrates’ dying words were:—“To live—means to be ill a long while: I owe a cock to the god Æsculapius.” Even Socrates had had enough of it. What does that prove? What does it point to? Formerly people would have said (—oh, it has …

Sources: gutenberg:52263

1888 · Develops

Twilight of the Idols · The Problem of Socrates §11

Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Dialectics as a weapon of the weak — reason against instinct as a physiological verdict.

I have now explained how Socrates fascinated: he seemed to be a doctor, a Saviour. Is it necessary to expose the errors which lay in his faith in “reason at any price”?—It is a piece of self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists to suppose that they can extricate themselves from degeneration by merely waging war upon it. They cannot thus extricate themselves; that which they choose as a means, as the road to salvation, is in itself again only an expression of de…

Sources: gutenberg:52263

1888 · Develops

Ecce Homo · Why I Write Such Good Books · Birth of Tragedy §1

Ecce Homo (1888)

Nietzsche reads his first book against decadence and as a first revaluation of the tragic.

In order to be fair to the _Birth of Tragedy_ (1872) it is necessary to forget a few things. It created a sensation and even fascinated by means of its mistakes--by means of its application to Wagnerism, as if the latter were the sign of an ascending tendency. On that account alone, this treatise was an event in Wagner's life: thenceforward great hopes surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this day, people remind me, sometimes in the middle of _Parsifal,_ that it rests on my…

Sources: gutenberg:52190

1888 · Develops

Twilight of the Idols · TI-the-problem-of-socrates-2

Twilight of the Idols (1888)

The thesis hardens: the great sages read as decadent types, Socrates first of all.

This irreverent belief that the great sages were decadent types, first occurred to me precisely in regard to that case concerning which both learned and vulgar prejudice was most opposed to my view. I recognised Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decline, as instruments in the disintegration of Hellas, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek (“The Birth of Tragedy,” 1872). That _consensus sapientium,_ as I perceived ever more and more clearly, did not in the least prove that they were …

Sources: gutenberg:52263

1888 · Develops

Twilight of the Idols · TI-the-problem-of-socrates-12

Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Decadence as will to end: Socrates wished to die; the doctor’s cure is death.

—Did he understand this himself, this most intelligent of self-deceivers? Did he confess this to himself in the end, in the wisdom of his courage before death. Socrates wished to die. Not Athens, but his own hand gave him the draught of hemlock; he drove Athens to the poisoned cup. “Socrates is not a doctor,” he whispered to himself, “death alone can be a doctor here.... Socrates himself has only been ill a long while.” [1] It should be borne in mind that Nietzsche recognis…

Sources: gutenberg:52263

1888 · Develops

Ecce Homo · EH-why-i-am-a-fatality-4

Ecce Homo (1888)

Christian morality renamed the morality of decadence — the decisive negation.

In reality two negations are involved in my title Immoralist. I first of all deny the type of man that has hitherto been regarded as the highest--the _good,_ the _kind,_ and the _charitable_; and I also deny that kind of morality which has become recognised and paramount as morality-in-itself--I speak of the morality of decadence, or, to use a still cruder term, Christian morality. I would agree to the second of the two negations being regarded as the more decisive, for, reck…

Sources: gutenberg:52190

1888 · Develops

Ecce Homo · EH-why-i-am-a-fatality-8

Ecce Homo (1888)

Signs of decadence relocated into “disinterestedness” and self-denial.

Have you understood me? I have not uttered a single word which I had not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which unequalled in history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it is a _force majeure,_ a fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood highest: h…

Sources: gutenberg:52190