Trajectory (plain list)
Perspectivism
Knowing as interpretation across Joyful Science and Beyond Good and Evil — infinite perspectives without collapsing into the comfort of mere relativism.
1882 · Anticipates
The Joyful Science · §110
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Knowledge’s origin in useful errors — truth as species-preservation, not a view from nowhere.
_Origin of Knowledge._—Throughout immense stretches of time the intellect has produced nothing but errors; some of them proved to be useful and preservative of the species: he who fell in with them, or inherited them, waged the battle for himself and his offspring with better success. Those erroneous articles of faith which were successively transmitted by inheritance, and have finally become almost the property and stock of the human species, are, for example, the following:…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1882 · Develops
The Joyful Science · §301
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Contemplatives as composers of valuations, colours, and perspectives.
_Illusion of the Contemplative._—Higher men are distinguished from lower, by seeing and hearing immensely more, and in a thoughtful manner—and it is precisely this that distinguishes man from the animal, and the higher animal from the lower. The world always becomes fuller for him who grows up into the full stature of humanity; there are always more interesting fishing-hooks, thrown out to him; the number of his stimuli is continually on the increase, and similarly the variet…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1886 · Introduces
Beyond Good and Evil · §34
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
The world as appearance and the temptation of a “true” world behind it — philosophy’s oldest prejudice.
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 e…
Auf welchen Standpunkt der Philosophie man sich heute auch stellen mag: von jeder Stelle aus gesehn ist die Irrthümlichkeit der Welt, in der wir zu leben glauben, das Sicherste und Festeste, dessen unser Auge noch habhaft werden kann: - wir finden Gründe über Gründe dafür, die uns zu Muthmaassungen über ein betrügerisc…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1886 · Develops
Beyond Good and Evil · §22
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Even “nature’s conformity to law” is interpretation — philology of the cosmos as will to power.
Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but "Nature's conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so proudly, as though--why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad "philology." It is no matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the mod…
Man vergebe es mir als einem alten Philologen, der von der Bosheit nicht lassen kann, auf schlechte Interpretations-Künste den Finger zu legen - aber jene "Gesetzmässigkeit der Natur", von der ihr Physiker so stolz redet, wie als ob - - besteht nur Dank eurer Ausdeutung und schlechten "Philologie", - sie ist kein Thatb…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1886 · Develops
Beyond Good and Evil · §188
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Morality as narrowing of perspectives — stupidity as life-condition.
In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason", that is, however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every lang…
Jede Moral ist, im Gegensatz zum laisser aller, ein Stück Tyrannei gegen die "Natur", auch gegen die "Vernunft": das ist aber noch kein Einwand gegen sie, man müsste denn selbst schon wieder von irgend einer Moral aus dekretiren, dass alle Art Tyrannei und Unvernunft unerlaubt sei. Das Wesentliche und Unschätzbare an j…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1887 · Anticipates
The Joyful Science · §354 · The Genius of the Species
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Consciousness as a social surface — knowing already bound to the herd’s need for communication.
_The "Genius of the Species."_—The problem of consciousness (or more correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to overtake the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could in fact think, feel, will, and recollect, we could likewise "act" in every sen…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1887 · Develops
The Joyful Science · §374 · Our new Infinite
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Our new infinite: the world may include infinite interpretations — perspectivism without lazy relativism.
_Our new "Infinite."_—How far the perspective character of existence extends, or whether it have any other character at all, whether an existence without explanation, without "sense" does not just become "nonsense," whether, on the other hand, all existence is not essentially an _explaining_ existence—these questions, as is right and proper, cannot be determined even by the most diligent and severely conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect, because in thi…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §12
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Classic formulation: only a seeing and knowing from a perspective; more eyes, more complete.
Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness is induced to _philosophise_; on what will it vent its pet caprice? On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, to be real; it will look for _error_ in those very places where the life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multip…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Comments on
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §12 → Beyond Good and Evil · §34
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Genealogy intensifies BGE’s seeming-world thesis into methodological perspectivism.
Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness is induced to _philosophise_; on what will it vent its pet caprice? On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be true, to be real; it will look for _error_ in those very places where the life instinct fixes truth with the greatest positiveness. It will, for instance, after the example of the ascetics of the Vedanta Philosophy, reduce matter to an illusion, and similarly treat pain, multip…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1888 · Comments on
Ecce Homo · Why I Write Such Good Books · Birth of Tragedy §1
Ecce Homo (1888)
Late insistence that the early book already fought the optimism of science and the faith in one world.
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