Notes on: Nietzsche, F. (1974) [1887]  The Gay Science.With a Prelude in Rhymes and  an Appendix of Songs. Trans and with Commentary by W Kaufmann. London: Vintage.

Dave Harris

[I am reducing the aphorisms to blunt English as usual I can't seen any point in commenting on the truly awful verses and songs, which I attribute to Nietzsche's cyclic upswing. In general, don't bother with the windy throat-clearing cryptofascism of the first 3 'books', especially if you have read some Nietzsche already. The last 2 'books' deliver the bits that Deleuze cites]

The Preface tells us that Nietzsche was in an optimistic mood when writing this (before Zarathustra).He even felt good about his illness,which he saw as a necessary preparation for this uplifted mood.

Book 1

1.  The self preservation of the species is the dominant instinct in human beings.  All sorts of otherwise undesirable behaviour assist self preservation including hatred and lust.  Self preservation is been so successful that it is now almost impossible to threaten humanity by any action—so we should just go ahead and live our lives.  We have to laugh at ourselves here, at the comedy of existence, and laughter combined with wisdom produces gay science.  Tragedy probably dominates the current age, but even this should be seen as preserving the life of the species.  Reason and the passions are also functional.  The development of scholastic ethics has detached itself from this understanding, however, but laughter awaits it too.  However, as a result, human beings now think that they must be able to find a purpose for their lives, some reason in life, some sacred realm which cannot be laughed at.  Human history shows the ebb and flow of these two principles.

2.  Few people have an intellectual conscience, and few are interested in critical reason about their faith.

3.  The common people think that noble feelings are inexpedient and are suspicious of true motives.  Either that or they see noble people as false for apparently ignoring immediate advantages.  This instrumentalism at least serves to guide them away from reckless acts.  Nobles are more likely to trust their instincts even at the expense of reason, so they are equally unreasonable [Kaufmann's note suggests that this exonerates Nietzsche from charges of elitism, (77)].  Their aversion to reason makes them more and more stupid and animal like.  Nobles prefer to follow their heart not their head, to live with passion.  This makes them despicable in the eyes of common people, especially if the ends to be pursued seem worthless, such as the accumulation of knowledge.  Noble taste is idiosyncratic, but it is thought of as generally valid.  It produces elitism, whereby common men appear as inferior types: nobles cannot understand the aspirations of ordinary people and this produces injustice.

4.  Passion, even if it means evil advances humanity [admiration for the elite here then?].  Anything that is new is usually labelled as wicked or evil.  English philosophy is particularly misguided with its notion of good and evil as disguises for expedient and inexpedient for the species.  The evil instincts are expedient.

5.  There are those who feel that total commitment is needed to be effective, and that's a moral philosophy might justify this action.  Some other-worldly justification increases their own self confidence.  Submission in the name of self interest in these cases can be validated by 'pompous principles'(80).

6.  Philosophical reflection looks particularly ridiculous these days, and instead we have to produce rapid judgments and faults in the midst of all our other activities.

7.  The proper study of morality would require full examination of the ways of life of people in the past including their passions, but this would be an immense labour.  Someone should be doing it, though, looking at how everyday life is affected by passion, or how different foods have different moral effects.  Pinning down all the conditions that affect activity would require exhaustive study.  However, it might produce possibilities for a science of action and future experimentation: whether science would be suitable for this task would be interesting to see, since it normally simply ignores such issues. [Room for a sociology of everyday life then? More room than you find in Deleuze's 'empiricism'. This is also the claim that the best ideas can be tested, 51. Of course, N has in mind physiology]

8.  There is an unconscious, and it is little studied compared to the more visible qualities.  There might even be unconscious virtues.

9.  There are lots of potentials in human life that have not yet been realised but might be about to be

10.  We can see heroes of the past as ghosts haunting modern unusual humans, as a kind of atavism.  The old instincts are revealed and preseved  best in conservative regimes [socialist regimes can only promise a relief from pain -- see 12. below] .

11.  Consciousness only develops late in human evolution, which shows the instincts have been far more important for preservation.  It is nonsense to think that consciousness expresses our inner kernel, or stands for the organism as a whole.  Luckily, it is only recently that conscious inquiry has been important.  It is even more important to make knowledge instinctive: mostly, 'consciousness relates to errors'(85).

12.  One current goal is to acquire as much pleasure as possible, and this is informed by science.  However pleasure and displeasure are tied together, and wanting lots of the former necessarily involves getting lots of the latter, as the Stoics understood.  The capacity for joy is increased only at the price of experiencing more displeasure.  Promising to lower the level of human pain is also reducing this capacity.

13.  One way of exercising power is to inflict pain on others, and benevolence towards others is a way of demonstrating our power.  Even martyrdom is a desire for power.  However, hurting others is 'rarely as agreeable' (87) as giving pleasure [again, Kaufmann thinks this exonerates Nietzsche], and power is contaminated with revenge or scorn.  It is contemptible to deal with easy prey as in codes of knightly conduct that valued fighting only peers.  Pity is the resort of those with no pride and few prospects, a form of dealing with easy prey, 'the virtue of prostitutes' (88).

14.  Greed and love are actually closely related, and love can be a lust for new possessions, or wanting to dominate others to extend ourselves.  This applies to pity as well.  Sexual love is about possession and unconditional power.  It is amazing that it has been so glorified in our culture, and seen as the opposite of egoism.  There is some higher love, where feelings are shared in pursuit of the higher ideal, but this is normally just called friendship.

15.  Distance preserves charm.  Some people admire themselves best if they examine themselves from a distance.

16.  Some people do not wish to have their feelings exposed.  Friendship and brotherhood are difficult because people are separated by massive gulfs in modern society

17.  Some people claim that their poverty is a necessity, including poverty of virtue.

18.  We lack nobility because we also lack slavery by contrast.  Doctrines of equality have induced a slavishness in all of us.

19.  Evil has always been necessary in the lives of great people and strong natures.

20.  Prudence is fashionable at the moment but it may come to be seen as vulgar in the future.  In that happy day, it might be seen as noble to be foolish.

21.  Virtues seen to lie in unselfishness.  Those who have virtue become victims of it even if they acquire neighbourly praise, such as self sacrificing youth.  But maybe self sacrifice reduces usefulness for society.  What we have to resist is the kind of virtue that implies we should become simply functions of the whole at the expense of private harm. The educational system peddles myths here, such as that 'raging industriousness' is a virtue and will bring great benefits.  The dangers are not mentioned.  It is a way of dominating individual goals in the name of the general good.  The most industrious often experience blunted senses.  The education system tries to turn the every individual virtue into a public utility.  Altruism and utility are combined. Selflessness is being praised because of its advantages - the underlying motives are the opposite of the principle [Nietzsche himself is clearly speaking in praise of leisure and moderation, even 'indifference or irony'(94)]. .

22.  [Nietzsche has a dream which mocks his habit of organizing his day around himself. He accepts the rebuke]

23.  Corruption of a society can be seen if superstition dominates over common faith, but superstition is much more individualistic, and so can be seen as a sign of progress.  The old guard always see change as corruption.  A corrupt society similarly appears as exhausted, with the old vigour and liking for war and athletics diminished.  Or is it that private concerns have become more dominant and are even more vigorous?.  Corruption involves a decline of cruelty, or is it that cruelty is more refined, so that wounding people with words increases.  Are the tyrants that emerge better seen as harbingers of individuality?  Isn't tyranny an acceptable price to pay for social stability?  Insecurity spreads and makes it easy for bribery and treason.  Napoleon once demanded the right to accept conditions from no one and to follow his own fancies.  Overall, 'corruption is merely an nasty word for the autumn [harvest time] of a people' (98).

24.  Feminine types want to make life more beautiful, masculine types make it better and safer.  Feminism goes together with intoxication and consolation, as a form of continuing misery: the demand for change is a good outcome, however, since the strong are too easily satisfied to be left in charge [this seems just to be deeply confused, or falsely balanced, but Kaufmann sees it as an example of Nietzsche's dialectic].  The Chinese for example are not interested in change, and Chinese conditions can also describe the ambitions of 'socialists and state idolaters' in Europe who want to make life better and safer (99).  Feminist dissatisfaction has generated 'intellectual irritability that almost amounts to genius'.  [Kaufmann points out that Nietzsche tended to see anything Chinese as unhealthily stable or rigid, anything that opposes the passions].

25.  Those with excessive humility are likely to see anything unusual or breaking with common sense as indicating a weakness in themselves.

26.  Life opposes anything that wants to die that grows old, and in vain do our religious thinkers [Moses in this case] try to outlaw murder of the dying or wretched.

27.  There are those who wish to renounce the pleasures of this world in order to get to a higher world.  Yet the ambition is what counts, and is properly affirmative, despite the surface appearance of renunciation. [so these are not misguided ascetics]

28.  Great people are sometimes so strong that they come to reject weakness and compassion.  This can cause harm if it also destroys people who are only developing their strength.

29.  Habit and conservatism is often covered with subsequent lies. [contradicts the earlier stuff on conservatism?]

30.  Anyone who seeks fame deliberately, 'like all politicians' (102) choose their friends either as allies, or from fear.  Sometimes they plagiarise.  Sometimes they mask their intentions or inadequacies.  Consequently, they sometimes appear just as screens for the qualities of others, stage play.

31.  Common practices tend to get monopolized by the powerful and noble, such as hunting.  Perhaps one day this will cover buying and selling, which will become noble.  On the other hand, politics might become more common and vulgar.

32. Philosophers must be careful with their disciples: those who are too enthusiastic and become trenchant critics might get hurt, and others might be forced to compromise [Kaufmann says that the latter applies to Nietzsche's sister who wanted to combine Nietzsche and Wagner, and added a double barrel to her name to respect both her husband and her brother, even though the former was a notorious anti Semite and N detested him].

33.  Human beings are no more mistrustful and evil than they were in the past, but if they are, science has made them so.

34.  Great men encounter retroactive forces as secrets from their past appear to limit their current reputation.  History alone will have to decide the balance.  The past of many great [other] men should be investigated [to show that it is not only Nietzsche who has appalling secrets in their past?].

35.  Those who want to think in a new way are not always people with superior intellect.  Heretics can be driven by nastiness and malice, like witches, driven by a lust to harm dominant ideas.  The Reformation produced lots of these, since it was a revival of medieval spirit, but no longer combined with good conscience.

36.  [Nietzsche wants to revalue the contribution of particular Roman emperors.  Kaufmann says this is a way of exposing the usual simple evaluations]

37.  Science has developed partly because it was a way to understand god and his wisdom, as well as promising greater morality and happiness, two errors associated first with Newton and then with Voltaire.  Spinoza's error was to see science as offering something unselfish and self sufficient, enabling humans to partake of the divine.

38.  The young are attracted by zeal for a cause, not the cause itself, and this makes them exploitable.

39.  Changes in taste are powerful social forces, and bring changes in opinion in their wake.  Taste changes if powerful and influential people guide it and if coercion is possible.  The differences are to be found in different lifestyles, including nutrition, 'perhaps a deficit or excess of inorganic salts in their blood and brain' (107).

40.  Nobles and the military develop better relationships with underlings than employers do.  Industrial culture is vulgar, based on brute need.  Submission to leaders is different, less painful. Leaders of industry just seem exploitative, lacking nobility, uninteresting as persons.  If they had these qualities, socialism might be less popular.  The masses are perfectly willing to submit as long as this can be seen as legitimate, based on people being born to command.  The vulgarity of bosses implies that there is no basis for hierarchy except accident and luck, and that another throw of the dice might reverse their fortunes.

41.  Thinkers should see the consequencess, good or bad, as the results of experiment.  Remorse is not appropriate, because no one has the right to demand satisfactory results.

42.  For most people work is the means and not an end, but for a few, pleasure is essential.  This group includes artists, thinkers but also wealthy 'men of leisure'(108).  They welcome a hard and difficult work and do not fear boredom: indeed boredom is sometimes essential and to be welcomed.  Asians realize this more than Europeans, hence their interest in opium as opposed to the immediate hit of alcohol.

43.  The penal code in any society is based on penalizing the customs of neighbours—so the Wahabbis oppose smoking and drinking as a mortal sin.  Romans used a belief that adultery was a mortal sin as was drinking wine among women, and this is the origin of the custom of kissing women when you greet them, so you can tell if they had been drinking.  It was the Roman fear of importing Dionysian cults from neighbouring Southern Europe.

44.  Imagined motives for conduct are more important than actual ones.

45.  Epicurus ought to be revalued and admired [the faithful Kaufmann says this is another neglected side of Nietzsche, but I still don't get the reference.  Nietzsche referred to himself apparently as Epicurean in terms of having a calm and patient soul while contemplating life with joy].

46.  Science provides pleasingly reliable results in the midst of the normal uncertainties, fantasies and social changes.  Formally, stability had to be provided by rigid moralities, while fantasies and fairy tales provided a glimpse of liberty and freedom.

47.  Passion is not just confined to the more vulgar types, and any general attempt to suppress the passions produces shallowness and, in the case of Louis XIV, excessive courtesy.  Currently, it's the coarser signs of passion that are valued, but this is still not genuine passion.  Celebrating savage forms of passion will end in real savagery.

48.  Real knowledge of misery is not widespread these days.  Before, people learned how to cope with misery, privation and pain, and equally, enjoyed inflicting it.  Misery of the soul has become a pose, a sign of refinement, and real physical misery is equated with minor aches and pains.  Pain is now hated and feared.  Pessimistic philosophy is not a sign of an awareness of misery, but almost a substitute for it.  People would do well to experience real misery instead.

49.  Magnanimity can arise from rapid emotional fluctuations, where satisfaction is followed by weariness and aversion.  Magnanimous people are therefore really extremely vengeful, so good at taking revenge that nausea follows, and forgiveness.  This nausea  provides exactly the same ecstatic pleasure.  The magnanimous are every bit as egoistic as those seeking revenge.

50.  The fear of solitude is often the most powerful force that keeps us adhering to moral codes or educational standards.  It is a further sign of the herd instinct.

51.  The best ideas can be tested.  Those that cannot, even skeptical ones, are worthless.

52.  Knowledge that others have of us is more powerful and knowledge we have of ourselves.  'It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than to cope with a bad reputation' (115).

53.  The realm of goodness often conceals evil impulses because our perceptions are not keen enough.  This explains eternal cheerfulness in most people, and the gloominess in the great thinkers.

54.  Appearances can be seen as like a necessary dream.  The whole contrast between appearance and essence is irrelevant.  If we had to choose, it is better to opt for the dream of appearances which can be enjoyed.  [Kaufmann adds a note to explain that the experienced world is produced by a prerational past, but even when we realize this, we should welcome the chance to experience appearances.  Indeed, we have no choice because there is no essence, 'no objective reality, no thing in itself; there is only appearance in one or another perspective' (116).

55.  People become noble not because they make sacrifices or are altruistic, not because they are passionate in general.  Instead, it is an ability to discover value, to pursue goals including self sufficiency.  Usually, this means choosing things that do not preserve the species or which are common or necessary.  This was a slander, but nobility consists of advocating general rules and judgments.  [So rather similar to Kant, and very much open to Bourdieu's suggestion that this is class closure].

56.  The desire for action among young Europeans to stave off boredom can also be seen as a craving for suffering.  So 'neediness is needed' (117).  The demand is that unhappiness should appear from outside and become something that can be fought.  However, the genuinely strong and adjusted realize that suffering can also be found internally, to be created, and then satisfied.  Others are not needed.  Self sufficiency will produce happiness, choosing a project of your own.

Book 2

57.  People who claim to be realist or realistic do not realize that defining reality is a matter of different perceptions, nor how important the influence of earlier perceptions and concepts have been, together with all their fantasies and prejudices.  If we had to strip the human elements away, there would be no reality.  The point is to try to transcend past intoxications, instead of claiming that we are immune from them.

58.  What things are called is more important than what they are in reality [sic] , and that includes the reputation of people or customs.  What is transparently subjective initially becomes objective over time.  If we change our perception and our terms, we will change reality [very like the more voluntarist interpretations of Berger and Luckmann.  Surely hostile to Deleuze though?]

[And now some classic remarks on women...]

59.  When we come into contact with women, and discover their 'repulsive natural functions' (122) we develop a contempt for nature, and forget the importance of physiology.  The same impulse inspires believers to reject materialism and the mechanics of nature.  It is very difficult still to ignore the pull of fantasy and dreams and develop artistic sentiment.

60.  Compared to the noise and bustle and threats of the earth, fantasy can appear to be a calm sailboat, a second self, spirit like, moving over existence.  All noise and bustle leads to this fantasy of distance.  It explains the liking for magic and also for women, who seem to offer peace and calm.  However, tangling with women still involves a great deal of noise, and they seem more appealing the further away they are.

61.  Friendship is a much higher virtue and was once valued - and needs to be again [compared to lurve?].

62.  Love is a euphemism for lust.  [Actually 'Love forgives the lover even his lust', so maybe it means that lust is OK as long as it is justified in the name of love?]

63.  Musical moods are produced by 'warm, rainy winds' and melody.  So is the thought of love in women.

64.  Old women are particularly skeptical, seeing existence as fundamentally superficial, and seeing virtue and profundity as simply a 'welcome veil over a pudendum'(125).

65. Noble women are still unable to express spirituality except in terms of offering virtue, and shame, but men receive these offers without realizing how the profound they are for women.

66.  Women like to appear as fragile and weak, making men appear clumsy and guilty.  This is a way of defending themselves against strength.

67.  Once men fall in love, women change and lose what it was that appealed in the first place, their changeability and mystery.  They often need to simulate of these original qualities, in an ongoing comedy of life.

68.  Women do not corrupt men, but rather the other way about, because it is men who construct the image of women in the first place.  This shows a more general law, that men are the ones with will, while women demonstrate willingness to conform to male images.  In this respect, men need education more than women do.

69.  Not wanting revenge is seen as a particular weakness.  Being able to seek revenge is quite attractive in some women, one of the secrets of their ability to enthrall men.

70.  We sometimes see in the theatre the notion of heroic, lofty women able to rule over men because they've adopted their best qualities.  However, this is seldom intended and is generally unconvincing anyway: men tend to interpret these effects in terms of notions of the mother, housewife or lover.

71.  Educated upper class women is paradoxical.  On the one hand they are supposed to remain ignorant of erotic matters and to feel nothing but shame at the thought of them, in order to defend their honor.  At the same time, they are rapidly exposed to reality and carnal knowledge through marriage.  Love and shame contradict.  There is not always a happy resolution of the two.  This often produces skepticism in women, and a lack of interest in themselves.  They can see having children as an apology for losing their honor.  They require a lot of kindness and understanding.

72.  For animals, females are more productive and there is no such thing as paternal love.  Everything become simple in that females are concerned with the welfare of their offspring to the exclusion of everything else.  However, there is a form of 'spiritual pregnancy' (129) that produces similar feminine contemplations, and produces 'male mothers'.

73.  It sounds cruel to kill disabled children, but it is crueller in the long run to let them live

74.  Women will fail to attract men if they appear to be too restless and unsure of themselves, 'and talk too much' (130).

75.  [My personal favourite, and one that even Kaufmann finds 'absurd'].  Small females seem to belong to another sex altogether and can never be beautiful according to Aristotle.

[Kaufmann's says that thankfully Nietzsche will move on to another topic -- art. But what if this is still a continuation of the absurd discussion of masculine and feminine dispositions?].

76.  Rationality is valued, and fantasy is embarrassing, and this is helped the human race to survive by preventing the sort of madness that follows arbitrary judgment.  Happily, human beings have developed a law of agreement, not the same as deciding whether things are true or not.  However, the old tendencies have not gone away.  Some of the best thinkers have to overturn this universal agreement to explore truth further.  The old laws of agreement seem unsatisfactory, or cause nausea.  There is a certain delight in madness as a result, but most of the population require stability, 'virtuous stupidity' (131), to remain as the rule, although the adventurous need to be defended as exceptions [you need JS Mill here, mate] .

77.  A certain vulgarity can give pleasure, especially in ancient societies, where a sense of shame has not yet developed.  Bad taste responds to a need, bringing satisfactions, and even a certain 'universal language' (132).  Good taste by comparison seems contrived and has never been popular, appearing at best as a kind of mask.  Vulgarity in current works is different and cannot avoid shame.

78.  Artists help us to understand ourselves, and our inner heroism.  It provides a kind of distance for reflection.  So does religion, possibly, by positing some eternal perspective which produces distance.

79.  Imperfections can also be attractive in art, in the sense of a failed vision, a lustful perfection which can never be achieved.  The audience responds because they can also grasp this vision.  This is how mere artistic works are transcended [could be Barthes!].

80.  Ancient Greece always valued excellent formal speaking, even if this went against passion.  We are delighted when heroes find words and reasons, even if this deviates from nature.  Here, art gains from being unnatural and conventional.  [Rather like his work on Greek tragedy here] we admire artists who suggest the higher attractions even if they cannot articulate them.  Greek theatre with its stiff conventions pursued this line best.  They particularly avoided any images that evoked pity or fear, or sentiment.  The attraction lay in beautiful speeches.  Current serious opera offers the reverse.  Very few people can pick up all the words, and speeches do not matter, in favour of the overall sound.  It is the music, which is both unnatural and beautiful, and even the recitative sections are there to give us a rest from the melody.  However, Wagner overemphasizes words and demands scholalry  attention to them.

81.  Greek notions of beauty included admiring things that could not be proved.

82.  Although the Greeks are always logical and plain when they thought, the modern taste is for small doses of unreason, designed to encourage esprit and sociability, especially among the French.

83. Translations have varied in different societies. One approach simply asset strips for the benefit of current concerns.  However, this ignores historical sense and becomes a form of domination or colonialism.

84.  The origin of poetry clearly indicates that the pursuit of utility has not always been dominant.  However, in ancient societies poetry was extremely useful, in developing superstition: rhythm was meant to impress the gods.  It certainly can overwhelm normal sensibility.  Poetry was also seen as philosophy and as useful in education.  Before then, music discharged the emotions, and dance restored proper harmony of the soul as a therapy.  Orgiastic cults serve to discharge the emotions by reaching an extreme form, leaving us in peace afterwards.  The rhythm in work songs was believed to keep at bay the demons and invoke the spirits.  The delphic oracle spoke in verses, and the rhythms in use  fixed the future: Apollo was the god of rhythm.  These purposes are still present, even though we have long learned to oppose superstition.  Philosophers still invoked the support of poets, even though poets are really telling lies [a witty  and ironic inversion at the end says Kaufmann]

85.  Artists are supposed to depict things that help men feel good or great, intoxicated or cheerful.  In this sense, artists do not really herald the new, but anticipate the reactions of the real appraisers—'the rich and the idle' (141).

86.  Some music and performance attempts to intoxicate the audience, for their amusement and relaxation.  This only prevents them experiencing the higher moods.  This produces nausea in the insightful philosopher.  It is supposed to be offering culture to the normal, but the whole process is really tragic or comical not the contents.  So much culture is really intoxication.

87.  Artists do not often know what they can do best themselves.  They do not try to develop their initial talents, but rather to simulate human emotions in their work.  They can become vain if they are successful at this.  The failure to recognize his real talent [for cameo?]  has affected Wagner who offered instead grandiose works.

88.  The more artists attempt to depict the truth with full seriousness, the more they deny their occasional impulse to be frivolous, and to go beyond mere appearance is.  Seriousness restricts the spirit and betrays us.  [Compare that with the need for seriousness in experiments according to Thousand Plateaus].

89.  The festival was an important function for art, but now it far too often offers intoxication to the weak and suffering.

90.  One reader will see in a book only light and insight, while another sees only shadows amplifying what was already in his soul.

91.  Autobiographies often reflect despotic attitudes towards the self, rather like an excessive form of discipline in creating art.

92.  Prose is really at war with poetry, containing implicit rejections of poetic techniques.  There can be reconciliations now and then, however, and these can produce joy.  Sometimes there is a comic effect [in reducing poetry to prose?].  Poets often write good prose, and the non poetic always bad prose.  Nietzsche likes Goethe and other poets, including Ralph Waldo Emerson.

93.  Writing does not itself offer much in the form of creative effort, but is a necessary evil to express thought, 'a pressing and embarrassing need' (146).  There are no good reasons for wanting to express thought, however..

94.  [An obscure discussion about someone called Fontenelle.  Kaufmann interprets it for us as an argument that truth is unobtainable, and errors always exist.  This is pursued in the next Book apparently].  Literally it is about Fontenelle's claims in his work Dialogues of the Dead, that witty speculation about moral questions and the importance of false ideas have now been justified by Nietzsche's own 'scientific' work, which promotes Fontenelle to the rank of serious thinker.  [Presumably, other former thinkers might be revalued in this way?]

95.  [This is about someone called Chamfort, a writer of aphorisms, who at first supported the French Revolution, but later reneged]. Chamfort was motivated primarily by his hatred of hereditary nobility, but unfortunately became a member of the nobility himself.  He repented and rejoined the mob to salve his bad conscience.  At least he offered us some witty analysis of the events, which actually helped romanticize the Revolution, and preserved a sense of humour as a remedy against life.

96.  Some speakers support the rationality of their argument with passion, others attempt this but lapse into obscure and confused rhetoric which produces mistrust.  This is still a form of passion, however, and can lead to an effective result in logical mockery and playfulness [I wonder who he had in mind here?  Kaufmann offers us no clue, alas.  I suppose it could be apology for some poor performances of his own?]

97.  Some writers are garrulous, some have had too many conceptual formulations, others are expressing delight in the use of good words and language, an inner pleasure: Goethe and Carlyle are examples [Negri insists that Deleuze is an example of someone who had too many conceptual formulations and can never settle on any one of them].

98.  Shakespeare is admirable, especially in his work featuring Brutus.  Brutus represented lofty morality and independence, and was prepared to sacrifice his friend for it, for freedom.  Caesar's  virtues made Brutus' gesture even more significant.  Perhaps there is some other 'dark event and adventure' in the soul, in Shakespeare's personal experience.  Shakespeare recognizes that he himself is unworthy to account for Brutus, in the scenes where Brutus turns on poets. 

99.  On contacting a higher culture, barbarians first accept all the vices and weaknesses.  This explains the reaction of most of Schopenhauer's German followers.  They did not like the tension between being and willing, and his clear thinking about Christianity, but valued rather his 'mystical embarrassments and subterfuges' (153) [which seem to be the bits where he tries to apply his understandings to actual politics, with that stuff about the universal will bringing about the need for sympathy or pity and the denial of individuality].  Wagner allowed himself to be led astray, first by Hegel, and then by Schopenhauer, and this led him to deny some other qualities of his own heroes such as their selfishness, and his higher ambitions to provide knowledge.  He also hated Jews, although 'after all, the Jews are the inventors of Christianity': Wagner and Schopenhauer saw Christianity instead as a kind of Buddhism.  Wagner displayed that characteristic merciful relations to animals as a guise for hatred against things and people [who else had something similar? Was it Orwell?].  We need a more honest appraisal of Schopenhauer instead, to regain his sense of independence rather than attempting just to be a follower, to develop our own lives, true to the spirit that passion and freedom is the thing to aim at [concluded with a quote to that effect from Wagner].

100.  We should acknowledge our intellectual debts, although it is hard to do so with any sort of grace.  It can seem to threaten self reliance.  Polite conventions are required instead.  Truly great men freely admit their gratitude to their predecessors, often after having had gratitude expressed to them.

101.  The court used to govern what counted as good speech and writing, but this broke down with the growth of specialized forms.  Now we are left only with caricatures of courtly speech.  Strangely enough, Voltaire wants to uphold this antiquated style.

102.  Philology should preserve the value of particular 'royal' books, if only for those very few who refer to them, and for those to come.

103.  German music is popular Europe-wide, because it offers an immense spectacle.  It also reflects 'the profound bourgeois envy of nobility' (158), especially of courtly manners.  The audience for this work are seen as semi barbarian, the people by the side of nobility, people in need of comfort, someone enthusiastically ecstatic, the type described by Goethe [there is a reference to some apparent meeting between Beethoven and Goethe, where B refused to step aside for nobility and lectured G to do likewise.  G saw B as an untamed personality and excused him on that basis].  The turn against melody could be seen as a democratic move, but this is a mistake.  Melody is lawless and critical of the unformed, and this makes people suspects that it belongs to the old order in Europe.

104.  Current standards of literary German reflect admiration for officialdom, the court and government.  The writing was seen as elegant compared to everyday city writing, and speech likewise.  Court affectations became second nature, and came to stand in for some common language emerging from local dialects.  There has also been an influence from French, Italian and Spanish languages introduced by the nobility, but Germans still sound pretty rustic compared to Italians.  The current search for a more elegant tone has only produced something that actually sounds 'scornful, cold, indifferent, and careless' (161), and this tone has been adopted particularly by Prussian officers, despite their modesty, at least compared to professors.  This officer discourse spreads through the ranks.  Overall, German now sounds arrogant and cold as a result of this militarization.  Effects on written German and the German character can be predicted.  Internationally, this characteristic has outweighed that produced by German music.

105.  When Germans act from passion, they often become clumsy and ugly, although they can rise to the beautiful and the sublime.  German artists aspire to this, but often appear clumsy.  However, 'their cramps are often no more than signs that they would like to dance' (162).

106.  Critical disciples are often more valuable, although their value is sometimes hard to appreciate [flat as a coat of white emulsion, Dave!].

107.  Science has brought disenchantment, but the arts offer some consolation because they still value appearances and the open-ended.  This makes existence still bearable aesthetically.  Arts provides us with good conscience in our search to become something bearable and aesthetic.  Artistic distance helps us reflect and appraise ourselves, separate the hero from the fool.  This serves to protect us against excessive seriousness, and to preserve our exuberance, even our childishness.  An excessively serious approach to morality would produce over-severe conformity [and asceticism?].  We should float above morality.  We should welcome occasionally feeling ashamed [Kaufmann says this clearly connects with Nietzsche on 'immoralism', on  the need to go beyond good and evil, and helps us appreciate the rhymes and songs in this work; at least Nietzsche says it is important to laugh at oneself].

Book 3

[At last some philosophy, or at least Nietzsche's assertive version of it]

108.  Like  Buddha, God is dead, but his shadow remains [Kaufmann says this is the first mention of the famous phrase]. 

109.  Life exists only on the surface of the earth, and it would be a mistake to see the earth itself as an organism.  Nor should our perceptions of the universe be mistaken for a real movement. In fact, the world is 'in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of the lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, duty, wisdom and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms'(168) [which seems to contradict his earlier stuff about how human perceptions are all that there are?].  Our reason usually fails.  In the universe 'the whole musical box repeats eternally its tune', [another first appearance says K] but this is not a melody.  The universe does not attempt to conform to human interests or judgment.  There are no laws in nature, only necessities.  Therefore there are no purposes, and no accidents either, because that implies purpose.  Death and life are not opposed: rather life is only a rare type of material that is dead.  There are no eternal enduring substances.  Matter is best seen as an error.  Our conceptions here reflect the influence of the shadow of God.

110.  Our intellect has typically produced errors, some of which we useful in preserving the species.  These became incorporated into culture.  They include views 'that there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, substances, bodies; the thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free;  what is good for me is also good in itself' (169).  These dominated over the search for an independent truth which has always seemed weak by comparison.  Each wrong knowledge was something that was validated by age or centrality to culture.  Denial and doubt was seen as madness, although the Greeks posited the notion of a sage who could somehow get to what was universal.  Even this assumed some changeless duration, and all powerful knower following only abstract reason.  This ignored the [social] origins of their own ideas, although others soon realized the influence of these origins leading to skepticism.  Skepticism also arose because two contradictory arguments seem to be applicable to life, useful for it, or not harmful at least.  Eventually, competing ideas were to be entangled with a lust for power [Kaufmann says this is an early version of the will to power], and this brought a more general interest in knowledge as well as faith and conviction.  Eventually, knowledge became seen as a force for good, and something therefore to be continually developed.  Eventually, even the search for knowledge became compromised when it came to contradict the interest in preserving life.  The real issue is still a possible clash between the truth and what is helpful for survival, and where this leaves people who want to pursue the truth—will they are also be incorporated?

111.  Logic grew out of an enormous realm of illogic, and the same tension between logic and survivability was evident.  For example, the tendency to develop rapid judgments of equality in matters such as 'both nourishment and hostile animals' (171) was clearly useful, and doubts could threaten survival.  This is the origin of that tendency to treat things that are merely similar as equal: it is illogical, 'for nothing is really equal'.  Similar considerations affect the emergence of the concept of substance, initially useful as a way to stabilize everyday flux.  Again caution in this matter and skepticism was dangerous for life.  The affirmation of life rather than [considered] judgment, the need to make mistakes and to 'make up things', to assent, to judge without implying a notion of justice were all helpful for survival.  The underlying processes here are still with us, although we are scarcely aware of them.

112.  We have learnt to describe events in a better way, and that includes to discriminate between cause and effect.  However, this is still an image of reality, not reality itself existing 'beyond the image, or behind it' (172).  This has produced the whole of human science, where people do not inquire about things like what qualities of chemical processes actually are, but content themselves with nonexistent lines, planes or atoms, 'divisible time spans, divisible spaces'.  All these are images.  Science has humanized things.  There is probably nothing like cause and effect, but rather 'the continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces' (173).  The apparent sudden appearance of effect is misleading - 'actually, it is sudden only for us', and an infinite number of processes are actually involved.  Continuum and flux would help us replace cause and effect.

113.  Scientific thinking not only provides images, but also supplies connections.  These days, there is, however, a poisonous effect, in the shape of impulses to doubt or negate.  Originally, these were repressed as hostile to life before scientific thinking was incorporated.  We can only hope the artistic energies and practical wisdom will be incorporated eventually in a 'higher organic system'.

114.  Once we construct an image, using all our previous experiences, we introduce moral experiences into our perceptions.

115.  Human thought was haunted by four errors—man saw himself incompletely, endowed himself with fictitious attributes, put himself above animals and nature, and took his categories as eternal and unconditional.  However, these errors were incorporated into dominant culture and were given such esteem that to attack them now looks like an attack on humanity and human dignity.

116.  Morality affects experience, and morality always involves judgments of value and rank.  Individuals are always subordinated to the herd, although different communities produced different moralities.  In the future, divergence will increase.

117.  The modern conception of conscience was unknown in the past, despite the knower being seen as central to law and morality.  Being isolated was the worst thing that could happen in the past, and individuality meant banishment [Kaufmann says this is similar to Sartre's notion that human beings are condemned to be free].  Excessive self centredness would have been thought of as madness, and free will meant a bad conscience [in the sense of knowingly departing from the community?].  This notion that whatever harms the herd produces the sting of individual conscience remains with us.

118. Relations between the strong and the weak are not properly the issue for discussions of virtue, because nature provides necessary alternatives, heading for regeneration and incorporation of the weak.  Both were typically feel happy with this arrangement: joy and desire in the stronger, joy and the wish to be desired in the weaker.  Pity usually involves 'the instinct for appropriation' of the weak (176).  Both terms are relative, however.

119.  Some people wish strongly to conform to necessary functions and their place in society.  For example some women overcome weaknesses in their men by running their purse, politics or sociability.  Failure to integrate functionally like this can produce irritability and self reproach.  [This aphorism is headed 'No altruism!]

120.  It is impossible to define health abstractly, since everything depends on specific bodies, their goals, energies and ideals.  This leads to the notion that human beings are 'unique and incomparable', and that we must therefore 'abjure the dogma of the "equality of men"'(177).  Even illness has a function in that it develops a thirst for knowledge and self knowledge.  Pursuing health all costs can therefore be actually barbaric and backward [special pleading here I reckon].

121.  The world as scientists understand it in terms of bodies, lines and planes and so on now help us survive, but here, survivability is not an argument in itself, and we might need instructive errors as well.

122.  Christianity has undoubtedly developed enlightenment but also taught us  moral skepticism, especially towards the values of the past.  We now find ancient philosophies embarrassing and naive.  However, skepticism has turned on all religious states and conceptions, and this might have gone too far.

123.  Science developed without a particularly abstract passion to know.  Science gains success as something more as a condition or ethos, something driven by mere curiosity or vanity.  Investigation has become a form of leisure (179) [the bastard has invented serious leisure as well!].  The catholic church has seen science like this as an interesting occupation producing definite advantages.  However, the suppressed notion is that there is some revealed truth as well, which makes the achievements of science trivial.  However, this striving for ultimate value limited science in the beginning.

124.  One consequence of this is that we are encountering the infinite, and we may now be realizing that excessive freedom and brings its own perils.

125.  A madman once argued that we had killed God, and therefore we had lost our sense of direction and felt much more alone in the universe.  We have murdered everything holy and mighty.  We cannot even ask for forgiveness.  We ourselves will be forced to become gods, and future generations will be expected to be somehow higher.  The madman realizes that this is too much to take, and possibly premature.  [Kaufmann says this is one of the most famous sections, and it follows from the earlier arguments, so it is not simply an isolated wacky assertion. ]

126.  Mystical explanations don't really explain anything [and so should not be taken as an alternative to Christianity or science?].

127.  Most people think that their will is powerful enough to intervene in relations of cause and effect.  But their will itself has been produced by all sorts of processes in the background.  An early belief was that everything that happened involved a will, and this remains as 'an atavism of the most ancient origin' (183).  The modern formulation is that every affect must have a cause, and this is now seen as not involving personal will, but the old beliefs persist.  For example Schopenhauer had a simple notion of the will, and ignored the complexities, such as will involving the pursuit of pleasure or avoiding displeasure; events operating on human beings through the experience of pleasure; nor that this operation requires interpretation, often unconsciously; that an awful lot of action takes place without engaging pleasure, displeasure or will, including that among 'the vast majority of organisms'(184).

128.  Prayer is intended to replace independent thought and to provide guidance about what to do at sacred sites so as not to disturb other people.  Fixed postures and mechanical speech operate like Tibetan forms of meditation, or those who count the names of Vishnu.  Sometimes, genuinely religious people can operate without these rituals, but for those who are 'poor in spirit' (185), mechanical praying is religion, and at least it keeps the poor tidy and makes them look civilized.

129.  It is true that god requires wise people, as Luther once said, but he also requires a lot of unwise ones.

130.  The Christian view of the world as bad and ugly has made the world bad and ugly.

131 Christianity initially rationalized [some] suicide as martyrdom or the result of asceticism, and this helped the Christian church gain power.

132.  It is tastes that makes us reject Christianity rather than reason.

133.  A truthful hypothesis is much more powerful than some faith in an untruth, at least in the long run [100,000 years, N explains]

134.  Pessimism arises from a dietary mistake.  Excessive rise consumption explains Buddhist pessimism, alcohol explains European discontent, especially among the Germans.

135.  Sin is 'a Jewish invention'(187). Christianity tried to '"Judaize" the world' (187), at the expense of Greek culture [and even Kaufmann says this is a dangerous flirtation with antisemitism given the negative connotations of the word].  Greek culture would not centre on a feeling of sin and repentance.  The Christian god is seen as omnipotent and vengeful, requiring contrition and degradation from sinners.  He takes sin as a personal offence.  The social and human consequences of sin are irrelevant.  Anything natural is considered to be ignoble.  It is quite unlike the Greek notion of tragedy.

136.  Jewish morality involves contempt for the human being, and a feeling of being sponsored by an all powerful divinity, just as French nobles compensated for their own humiliation by seeing Louis XIV as all powerful.

137.  Jesus Christ was necessary to redeem this all powerful wrathful god by contributing love and grace,but he also monopolized them : love and grace were far more common and widespread in other cultures.

138.  Jesus thought that sin was the worst form of suffering, although he was without sin himself, and could only experience compassion.

139.  Christians like St. Paul see the passions as evil, and this is quite unlike the Greeks.

140.  If god wanted to be loved he should have given up judging.  Jesus needed finer feelings here, but was limited by being a Jew.

141.  So god only loves us if we believe in him, while others must be evil?  This is very 'oriental'[Jewish].

142.  Our benefactor should not be constantly flattered.  We should follow Buddha in this respect.

143.  God has always been seen as a mask for human activity including laws and rights.  However, polytheism was much more flexible, expressing a plurality of norms, an essential requirement for the development of individuals and their rights.  All the mythical creatures of the other world justified egoism and sovereignty, since the freedom that god enjoyed was used to justify social life on earth.  Monotheism is much less flexible and is even threatening, since it imposes one normal type and ideal and limits our imagination.

144.  Religious war should be seen as a sign of progress since it shows that concepts are important, and subtle differences are significant even for the mob.

145.  Vegetarian diets are dangerous, and lead not only to the use of narcotics or alcohol, but produce narcotic thoughts and feelings.  A vegetarian diet helps develop the authority of priests.

146.  The names for other people were usually abusive.  The goths called their unbaptised fellows 'the nations', using a Greek word in the Bible that really means heathen.  This abusive name applied to Germans, and they should act up to it.  After all, Luther taught them to be un-Roman and said that they had no alternative.

147.  The major gifts Europeans give to other people are liquor and Christianity: both are European narcotics and produce high death rates.

148.  The German church was the least corrupt of all, which is why the Reformation happened there.  Without Luther, they would have developed a particularly civilized version of Christianity.

149.  The number of attempts to found new religions failed in Greece, because there was too much civilized diversity.  Pythagoras and Plato only founded sects, but this showed the emergence of heterogeneity and an end to simple herd instincts.  This is often misunderstood in terms of the decay of morals and corruption.  The success of Lutheranism shows that northern Europeans were still held back and more homogeneous and monotonous.  Christianity only succeeded because the Greeks and others had already been subject to Teutonic barbarism [against German racism says Kaufmann] .  Civilization is really developed when powerful individuals can create only sects, not masses, and this applies to the influence of arts or knowledge as well.  Mass appeal means little individuality and the triumph of the herd.

150.  The Christian idea of virtue involves a certain brutal contempt towards others. 

151.  The notion of some other world is central to religious ideas and to metaphysics, but it is based on error in interpreting natural events and limits of the intellect.

152 We have lost contact with ancient civilizations and ideas, including the divine inspiration of all experience, and notions of truth.  Feelings of the divine dimension increased the joy in living by raising the stakes.

153.  [Kaufmann says this is a transitional moment indicating a shift from criticism to suggesting what might follow.  N is quoting Horace on whether comedy must or should follow the death of god]

154.  People go through life oblivious to the dangers, as if they were drunk, and with the survival skills of the drunk.  Philosophers by contrast are 'made of glass', so their life is more dangerous, especially if they fall [morally and sexually, especially, no doubt].

155.  We love what is great in nature because we lack great human beings or gods.

156.  Human beings can oppose the whole spirit of the age and demand it account for itself, and it is this that delivers influence, want it or not.

157.  Making things up is seen as indicating a high stage of civilization. 

158.  Finding everything profound can be a curse, especially if we find out more than we wanted to.

159.  It is considered to be something shameful to be 'unyielding'.  'Honesty' seems more virtuous.

160.  People can fawn over virtues. 

161.  [Increasingly weird].  Some people wish to conceal their past.  Those who look towards the future need to conceal it in their faces in the interests of politeness.

162.  Egoism results from a flawed perspective where things close to one's self appear to be large.

163.  Gaining a great victory can remove the fear of defeat and make it more equitable.

164.  Human beings seeking rest surround themselves with dark objects and withdraw,  and this can act as a guide to those still searching for something.

165 Renunciation can bring joy on rediscovery.

166.  Only people and things that are like us encourage us and comfort us.

167.  We feel misanthropic towards others if we have been overexposed to them.

168.  Those who receive praise often lack an understanding of it, and imagine that others want praise instead, although indifference is even more hurtful.

169.  Courage can be combined with cowardice and indecisiveness.  Confronting an enemy can help us discover this virile and cheerful stance.[including metaphorical enemies like bacteria too, no doubt]

170.  Demagogues and populists can become lazy, but they will then fail, because the crowd is always pushing on.

Yada, yada...

173.  Some people conceal their lack of profundity in obscurity [!]

174.  Parliamentarianism is a form of plebiscitary democracy, and it helps those who want to seem independent.  Anyone trying to break the consensus will face opposition.

175.  The drum roll is the most eloquent way to raise the rabble.

177.  Laughter is one of the highest forms of education, and it is entirely missing in Germany.

180.  Critics of science are supported by the church and this is why they are permitted

185.  The poor misunderstand the notion of voluntary poverty, where they themselves have thrown everything away.

186.  Bad conscience is not resolved by being  decent and orderly: it is the result of the extraordinary.

188.  There is far too much similarity between the workers and the most leisurely, seen in the phrase 'we are all workers'

191.  You do no good by defending a cause with faulty argument.

192.  The apparently good natured, who seem to be good at forming relationships with everyone are really wishing to appropriate the other person and then delight in their new possession.

199.  The rich often display liberality, but as a kind of shyness. 

200.  Laughter nearly always depends on schadenfreude, 'but with a good conscience'(207).

205.  Need should not be seen as a cause but as an effect.

206.  The poor are all too willing to hurt each other, and this is almost a kind of pleasure for them.

209.  We can be asked for reasons for what we do in an aggressive way, and this can produce 'a stubborn aversion to all reasons' (208).  This is a way of preserving tyrannical rule.

212.  We can be deceived by the appearance of bad manners or impatience, which often conceal a considerable breadth and depth of spirit.

213.  Happiness and admiration really requires a constant feeling of contempt.

217.  Experiencing an effect often makes us change our mind about what we think has caused it.

219.  Punishment improves the people who punish rather than the punished.

224.  It's quite likely that the animals consider us to be people who've lost animal common sense, especially when we are miserable.

225.  Nature is evil, and great men know this.

227.  If we cannot control ourselves, we become easy prey for women [Kaufmann wants to elevate this into a view that those who do not have their own will to power becomes subject to the will of others]

228.  Trying to see distinct things as similar, say to effect a reconciliation, leads to mediocrity.

229.  Fidelity to something is really a kind of obstinacy.

232.  We shall arrange our waking life like our dreams—either 'nothing or interesting' (212).

233.  Action in the present is insignificant compared to the effects of great events in the past.

236.  Public orators are really actors impersonating themselves and producing a simplified version. 

237.  Politeness is often a disguise for timidity.

239.  Joylessness is far more contagious than happiness.

Yada, yada...

249.  The desire to acquire knowledge is the same as the desire to appropriate lots of individuals.

250.  Guilt does not exist , for example among witches, even if the guilty and their judges believe it does.

258.  'The denial of chance.—No victor believes in chance' (217)

259.  Good and evil are the prejudices of god, at least according tothe Serpent.

265.  What stands as truths are really errors that can not be refuted [very much like LaTour here!]

271.  Pity is the greatest danger.

Book 4.  Sanctus Januarius

[Kaufmann reminds us that for the faithful, St. Januarius was able to liquefy his blood on certain feast days.  Clearly, Nietzsche thinks that his blood is also being revived.  We can anticipate a manic phase, possibly tinged with all sorts of self pitying worries about why nobody likes him and how he has been so badly misunderstood].

276.  He still feels himself alive and therefore able to think of the future.  He devotes himself both to affirmation and to amor fati.  He says he doesn't want to accuse anybody or wage war any more—just look away.

277.  As you get older, you realize that life usually turns out for the best, and that even the apparent setbacks prove to be important and significant on a personal level.  This helps us realize how petty the Christian god is, with his apparent omnipotence and demand for constant service: Epicurus had a better idea.  Ultimately, though, our own skill in interpretation and action has brought about this happy result, even though we scarce give ourselves credit.  Even happy chance can do no better.

278.  The bustle of life indicates enjoyment and desire, although the shadow of death always hangs over it.  It is tempting to see life as a preparation for the future, while the certainty of death seems to have no impact.  This is good, and Nietzsche's own aim is to make life as appealing as possible in the minds of others.

279.  We make friends and then lose them, but this is quite normal, and at least the memory of friendships in general can be valued, whatever the relation turns out to be in practice.

280.  We need much better buildings and layout in our cities, ones which will encourage thoughtfulness and contemplation.  Church buildings are no good because they are contaminated with Christianity which dominates thinking.

...  [I'm missing bits out here and there]

282.  Even great spirits can reveal their humble origins in things such as the 'gait and stride' of their thoughts (227).  Longwinded writing can be seen as a way of trying to conceal this.

283.  A 'more virile, warlike age' (228) is to be welcomed because it will restore honor and courage.  A new age is dawning where the search for knowledge will seem heroic and war as will be fought for the sake of ideas.  We should encourage the development of suitably courageous human beings, despite the the bad effects of modern civilization.  They will be cheerful, patient, unpretentious and not vain.  They will march to their own tune and be ready to command and obey.  They must live dangerously and take risks in their pursuit of knowledge, and they will come to power.

285.  [Apparently, Kaufmann says, this passage refers to the discussion of the man of renunciation, but this time with a positive spin].  We should abandon any attempts to pray, trust, restrict our thoughts, or seek someone who will finally make our lives better for us.  There is no reason in what happens, no eternal love or resting place.  We 'will the eternal recurrence of war and peace' [the first mention, says Kaufmann] (230).

288.  Having elevated moods and feelings makes us truly human.  Such human beings might appear eventually after 'a great many favourable preconditions', which arise from more than even the luckiest of dice throws.  These conditions might take the appearance of a permanent state of movement between high and low [!].

289.  It is common for everyone to find a justification of their way of living and this makes them happy, but what they actually need is justice and new philosophers, ones which will also embrace the 'antipodes' of the 'moral earth'[presumably either moods of dark depression or all the old stuff about celebrating cruelty and evil?].

290.  Lots of people make their own strengths and weaknesses into personal style, re-interpreting ugliness, and postponing judgment.  However, the strong and domineering are able to impose their taste and achieve gaiety as a result of dominating nature with their personal styles.  The weak hate style, however, and prefer to see themselves as encouraging free nature, 'wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, and surprising' (233).  At least this is a way of becoming satisfied with themselves and holding back their desire for revenge, and it prevents them from parading their ugliness.

291.  The city of Genoa reminds us that there once lived bold and autocratic human beings who were well disposed towards life and content to impose themselves on the local landscape, even competing among themselves.  Modern cities in Northern Europe are different, suggesting that people should see themselves as equal.  The people who built Genoa know much more about nature and adventure and the satisfaction of imposing their own taste.

292.  Populist moralizers, always banging on about virtue and the soul, will eventually devalue these ideas - 'alchemy in reverse'(235).  If we said that morality is forbidden, we might attract more heroic souls: fear will have replaced nausea.

293.  The rigours of science make lots of people are afraid that it is too difficult, but the severity of science produces a certain virile purity, where there is no need to prevaricate or be cautious.  It is difficult, but necessary to 'bring light to the earth' (236) with speed and severity, to be virile and terrible.  Fainthearts will not approve. [Fancies himself as a scientist? Physiological determinism is what he has in mind?]

294.  Lots of people think that anything natural is anti human and evil.  Only noble men can escape, because that requires no fear of yourself and possible infamy, an ability to fly without constraint.

295.  Brief enthusiasms are the best.  We always tend to think they will last, but we can abandon them if they satiate us; something new will soon come along.  Enduring habits can be tyrannical and are to be avoided.  Even illness [and manic depression] can be good if it helps us avoid them.  At the same time, some habit is crucial, and no one can live on the basis of perpetual improvisation [an important qualification to the exhortation to live dangerously, says Kaufmann. More self-justification, says Harris].

296.  You get a reputation by being consistent and conforming to the morality of societies, but this is very poor for critical thinking, or for anyone who changes their opinion.  It is particularly difficult if you know about all sorts of good ways of behaving in the past.

297.  The ability to accept both contradiction and criticism is a sign of being a higher human being, a liberated spirit, although few people would recognize that.

299.  We should learn from artists how to highlight and draw attention to particular aspects of reality, even though we are 'wiser than they are in other matters' (240).  We need to extend poetry into life.

300.  Science only emerged after a lot of prior work by magicians and astrologers, who first alluded to the possibility of hidden powers.  Even religion can be seen as a prelude to knowledge in this way, hinting at least at some underlying whole or at the power of self redemption.  Religious training can also produce the unintended consequence of liberating people from the idea of the maker altogether.

301.  The higher human being are much more perceptive and make more of what they see and hear.  They have higher kinds of pleasure.  The problem is that high culture turned you into a spectator, someone who can only contemplate, not the actor of the drama.  Mere activism lacked a sense of creative power.  Those who can think and feel at the same time can really create something that was not there before, and add to the world of colours, perspectives, affirmations and negations, as a kind of poem.  The most valuable things do not have value in themselves, because nothing has value in nature.  The value has to have been added by human beings, although we often forget this and are thus 'neither as proud nor as happy as we might be' (242).

302.  Those with refined senses enjoyed life and are prepared to risk it in the interests of further discoveries.  They can enjoy the moment, as Homer did.  However, they can also experience greater unhappiness and suffering, so that the smallest dejection can spoil life, as indeed happened to Homer himself[ who seems to have had a humour and common-sense bypass] .

303.  The best among us can improvise and take risks while seeming infallible.  They are open to contingency.  Others seem to be accident prone, but they can reconcile themselves to it fatalistically, aware that they have had both failures and successes, but that even the failures can help them get more out of life [Kaufmann openly admits this is self referential here].

304.  It is acceptable to be obsessed by some moralistic goal, even if this means forgoing other things.  The only exception is if this leads to negativity and self denial.

305.  Stressing the need for self control only leads to a constant irritability and mistrustfulness.  If greatness is achieved, it is at the expense of impoverishment and good relations with others.

306.  Epicureans choose lives that the suit their irritability and intellectualism.  Stoics on the other hand train themselves to become indifferent to any accidents of fate, and like to exhibit this indifference.  Stoicism is good for those who are are vulnerable to the actions of others, but those who are relatively secure do better to become Epicurean.

307.  Making mistakes is good for you ultimately, if it leads to a fuller life.  Feeling critical about something is often a sign that we need to move on.

308.  If we examine our everyday lives, we can see that they are always a mixture of courage and laziness.  Overall praise or respectability might help us develop a good conscience, but this will not do for men of science.

309.  People seeking the truth and reality can sometimes despair on being driven onwards in their search.  But they soon realize that contentment and beauty are never enough to really hold them back.

310.  We live like waves of the sea, ever pushing forward eagerly and constantly renewing our thrusts.  It is no good mistrusting the waves or fearing them [Kaufmann, 248, says this poetic bit arises from an exuberant state of mind, relishing his own overflowing vitality, even though he realized that he was sick and half blind.  There is a constant recurrence of the value of play, even in children.  There is also an notion of eternal recurrence, where what looks like endless repetition turns out to be liberating and delightful as long as one takes a Dionysian perspective]

311.  Occasionally, we feel weary about having to live in seclusion, and to avoid giving offence.  We think sometimes it might be simpler just to be foolish like all the rest.  There is pleasure in having other people set against you, however his own stance is to expose all that is false and blunders and confusions and contradictions, and let the common people laugh at him if they must.  It might have been better once when great creatives were celebrated, but no one is indispensable these days.  However, we must relish our own bold moments [Kaufmann says that this is a good indication of Nietzsche's personality, where he despairs at not being able to communicate with ordinary people].

[He thinks of his pain as a dog, he doesn't want to think about anything nasty, he wants to have his lion and eagle to remind him of how great he really is.  He thinks he will either blow himself up or burn out -- his real fate was worse, says Kaufmann, to be preserved as some sort of living dead celebrity by his sister]

316.  Those with a gift of prophecy also experience great suffering.  It is often pain that makes you a prophet.

317.  Life is really experienced through pathos although we often do not realize it at the time and think of pursuing an ethos instead.  He keeps getting painful memories, and realizes that eventually that will prevent him having a normal life [a horribly flat rendition of the poor chap's agonising]

318.  Pain can bring wisdom and that's why pain is essential to the human species, as a warning.  Some heroic types actually enjoyed pain, however, as a sign of their contempt for normal comfort and happiness.

319. We should be honest and thoughtful about our experiences, celebrating being able to reason about them instead of going against reason as the religious do.  We should treat experience as a kind of scientific experiment.

321.  Instead of trying to change other people, we should accept that other factors are far more influential.  We should also change people only by demonstrating our own brilliance.

322.  Proper thought will reveal the chaos of existence, against the attempt to discover scientific laws.

324.  Thinking of life as a series of experiments is liberating, and the dangers on offer encourage us to 'find places to dance and play' (255).  Life experience lead to knowledge.

325.  Great people must find them selves able to inflict suffering.  It's not enough just to be able to endure suffering, because even 'weak women and even slaves' can do that well.  The great by contrast have to master their own doubts of inflicting suffering.

326.  Theologians tried to make us think we are so bad that we must have some radical cure, and this is produced a collective negativity.  At the same time, people are endlessly resourceful when it comes to dealing with misfortunes.  There is nevertheless a convention to exaggerate pain and misfortune, not the ways in which one deals with them.  The religious just tell lies about how unhappy people are, although they know how much that will and passion contributes to happiness.  In practice, few of us would like to lead a stoic life.

327.  For the great majority, it is hard to start thinking about things without becoming serious and burdensome, but thinking can also be accompanied by laughter and gaiety [Kaufmann says that this is what gay science is all about, and that Nietzsche himself was not particularly grave or gloomy, although his sister made out that he was.  It also rescues Nietzsche against the charge that he is opposed to science somehow].

328.  Preaching that egoism is reprehensible has merely harmed the ego at the expense of the herd.  Unrestrained egoism is seen to be the source of misfortune.  However, for others, thoughtless and stupid obedience to rules was the reason for unhappiness, and thinking produce the greatest happiness.  This critique deprived stupidity of its good conscience.

329.  American lust for gold has started to infect Europe in disdaining spirituality, or even resting and reflecting.  Endless activity threatens culture and taste, and we can see this in 'the universal demand for gross obviousness' (259).  There is no time for any gracefulness or indeed any leisure.  Virtue becomes a matter of doing something in less time.  Work ends with fatigue.  We can see this in the way in which people write letters.  Any delight from arts remains as a form of intoxication.  Work is at the centre of good conscience.  Leisure and joy are seen as mere recuperation.  It is now almost impossible to take a walk 'with ideas and friends' (260).  Before, it was the opposite, that nobility and honour were displayed in leisure or war, but never in work.

331.  To acquire any sort of fame in a massive market, it is necessary to constantly 'scream'.  Proper thinking requires turning a deaf ear to the screams.

333.  Normal forms of interaction give us only a one sided view of events.  Contemplation can help us see the shared wisdom in these views, while preserving the role of instinct.  This is how human intelligence is developed anyway, so that the instincts have an important role.  Conscious thought is now valued, but we know an awful lot of activity is 'unconscious and unfelt'(262).  Of course, contending instincts can produce exhaustion in the thinker, and we may have to be heroic to proceed, but this is nothing to do with the essence of humanity, more that conscious thinking is the mildest and least harmful form.

334.  We have to learn to appreciate things like music, and learn to understand and tolerate it, even to fall in love with and become dependent on it.  It's the same with everything else: love has to be learned.

335.  Physics has taught us how to observe things in nonpersonal ways.  Knowing your self or observing your self only is far from essential to humans and their morality.  It is absurd to claim that we are the only people who can answer questions about ourselves, or respond to them wisely.  It is certainly not the case that deciding what is personally right is the source of moral action, even if it does obey what conscience tells us: conscience may not be true or infallible.  What of 'intellectual conscience'?  (263).  Instinctive judgments of what might be right have a prehistory, and we need to investigate how they came to appear so correct.  Was it some past command, or fear, or stupidity?  Taking conscience as crucial means that there has been insufficient thought about our opinions and the effects of their upbringing.  The firmness with which moral judgments are held might simply be stubbornness or inability to think of anything new.  Once we understand how a moral judgements have arisen, we can't see them as sacred, and the same goes for concepts of sin or salvation.  As for the categorical imperative, this just crept into Kant's philosophy to domesticate it after he had made the initial critical advances.  The unconditional aspects of it reflects selfishness.  It's absurd to experience your own judgement as a universal law, and it limits even one's self.  No one's position is the same, so no judgment can be collective.  External circumstances will dominate internal feelings.  There may be some similarity between opinions and regulations of action, but this is no proof of the truth, especially as so many actions are completely uninvestigated.  What we should be doing is reflecting on our own opinions and valuations, attempting to find a way forward towards what is good, but not worrying about the moral [as in social?] value of those actions.  We should not sit in moral judgment, endlessly reproducing the past.  We should act more like physicists in order to point the way to a new set of laws, fully taking into account the factors that have produced our experiences in the past.

337.  When we look at the present through perspectives derived from classic civilizations, one thing that emerges is the prominence of an historical sense.  This is having some interesting barely realized affects, and not everyone wants to develop it.  Contemplating the whole of the history of humanity will make us nostalgic, sad, or disillusioned, but if we can overcome this feeling, it might renew our obligation towards the past, to develop its most noble ideals.  If this could be managed, human happiness would be set to develop, as a god-like feeling, based on power and love, tears and laughter.

338.  Our personal suffering is incomprehensible to others, and when they do notice, they offer only superficial interpretations.  This follows from the development of pity, which always assumes a non personal form.  Pity diminishes us.  Those who pity us often just assume they can detect the role of fate, so they do not need to retrace the particular personal sequences that have led to distress.  Pitying people just wish to help, failing to see how suffering can even be necessary.  They look for quick solutions.  Ultimately, pity depends on the liking of being comfortable.  Attempting to act morally or with pity towards others can involve people losing their own way.  It is easy to do this out of sympathy with the suffering, but this is really a seductive way of escaping having to live our own way, with their own conscience.  Many people are attracted by 'the lovely temple of the "religion of pity"'(270).  The same goes for those who are thrilled by nationalist wars: war can offer a detour to suicide but 'with a good conscience'.  It might be necessary to live in seclusion if we want to live for ourselves, ignoring what seems important to everyone else, keeping the present at bay.  We should only help others once we have understood their distress, and even then only help them by making them bolder, better able to persevere, becoming more gay.  We need to share not suffering but joy.

339.  Knowledge or goodwill alone will not help us see ultimate beauty.  We require luck and accident as well, standing in precisely the right spot [landscape metaphor].  We may get only a single glimpse.  This is what makes life so marvelous.  This is why 'life is a woman'(272).

340.  We have to admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates, who knew not only how to talk but how to remain silent.  He should have stayed silent particularly when he was dying, because we can interpret his final remarks as saying that life is a disease.  In practice, he was relentlessly cheerful, and had no need to deliver himself of a final judgment [In Birth of Tragedy, N doesn't like Socrates, but Kaufmann says this is misleading, and that there are several other passages of admiration].

341.  The thought of the eternal recurrence can be appalling if we think that we simply have to live life again with 'nothing new in it', with all the pains and joys. It seems so indifferent towards individuals.  However, such a possibility can also be thought of as divine, because it would help guide our present actions.  We know we have done well towards life and ourselves if we 'crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal' (274).

342.  Although Zarathustra enjoyed solitude, it dawned [!] on him that he needed people to receive his wisdom, even if this involved going back to live among them, back to the underworld.

Book 5. We fearless ones

[Oh dear. A manic phase threatens,with lots of self-justification]

343.  God is dead, and belief in Christianity is on the wane, although the masses have not yet understood the implications.  The whole of morality is now threatened.  These consequences are so severe that anyone prophesying the event will take a risk, but those who see what is happening will not worry or suffer from fear: the personal implications are actually very encouraging and will produce happiness, exhilaration and encouragement.  We philosophers will feel a new dawn.  Knowledge will be permitted once again.

344.  As scientists, we must be modest about our hypotheses, which should not be seen as convictions: indeed the first step is to rethink our convictions.  Nevertheless, this depends on a conviction itself, a belief in science.  There are always presuppositions, including the need for truth as the ultimate value.  The will to truth means both not allowing oneself to be deceived, and not deceiving.  Taking the first, science might appear as something offering prudence or utility, assuming that self deception is harmful or less useful, but this assumption cannot really be sustained.  Science goes beyond the 'calculus of utility' (281).  Indeed, truth at any price is a divisive and dangerous social doctrine.  Will to truth can only mean deciding not to deceive, despite any advantages we might get from doing so, from being crafty like Odysseus.  So we still have a morality, we still need to be pious, even though nature and history are not moral themselves.  This is how science affirms another world.

345.  Solving great problems demands a very strong personality, seeing life itself at stake in solving the problem.  Weaklings should not bother.  Few moralists have displayed such personalities, indicating that people were not that concerned with morality except as a technical problem.  Critique in particular was missing, compared to say classifying moral systems.  Such historians are mostly English and 'do not amount to much' (284), often simply reproducing dominant morality and superstition, or assuming some consensus among the better nations, or even assuming that since nations vary, there can be no binding morality.  They often assume that if they have criticized popular opinions based on these moralities, they have criticized morality itself, but moral principles themselves need to be addressed and questioned.

346.  We might have some trouble being believed or understood.  It is not just a matter of denying God or morality.  'We' have seen through morality and gone beyond it, facing the consequences which include seeing the world as inhuman.  We mistrust and that is the basis of philosophy.  The world is still valuable, but Christian morality is based on 'vanity and unreason'.  The same goes for pessimistic philosophies like Schopenhauer and Buddhism.  It has been nonsense to compare the worth of man against everything else, but we must beware feel this year ing contempt for men, and pessimism, and recognize at least that the old world was endurable.  The problem is that if we don't abolish the old views, we would end in nihilism just as certainly as if we do.  [Kaufmann argues that this shows that Nietzsche is not a nihilist in either sense]

347.  People need to have a strong faith, but this conceals their weakness.  Even Christianity is still needed.  Faith is not weakened by refutation [with a reference to an apparent 'proof of strength' in the bible, which Kaufmann discusses, which relates to some section about the power of the spirit].  Metaphysics is still popular, and so is positivist science with its apparent certainties: both offer support or props for underlying weakness.  Positivism itself is haunted by a sense of disappointment and fatalism, as a sign of this weakness, or sometimes anarchism and indignation.  Patriotism can also be seen as a symptom of or support for weakness and produces nausea and incredulity, or nihilism and martyrdom.  Faith exists where will is lacking.  Will is the only proper sign of strength, and those with a strong will know how to command.  This is also needed.  Buddhism and Christianity arose from a disease of the will, and need for external commandment.  Both were fanatical at first, offering a substitute for will, one that the weak and insecure can subscribe to, one which hypnotizes them and offers the appeal of a single point of view.  Belief, faith, follows this perceived need to be commanded.  The free spirits, by contrast, support self determination, the denial of faith and certainty, even if supports are insubstantial and disaster possible.

348.  Scholars have no single class determination, but they are susceptible to popular ideas.  Behind any idiosyncrasy, it is usually possible to see a prehistory, based on the scholar's family and occupation.  Scholarly satisfaction is just like the satisfaction of good workmanship, and people think they have solved the problem simply by organizing it into schema or classifications, especially for those from clerical backgrounds.  Lawyers' sons develop advocacy.  Protestant ministers and school teachers show 'naive certainty', the result of having stated their case 'with vigour and warmth', so as to produce belief in the listeners.  Jewish scholars are influenced by business ethics and are not used to being believed until they have compelled agreement with logic and reason which triumphs over 'race and class prejudices' (291).  Europe owes Jews a debt here.  Their more rigorous and clean intellectual habits compare particularly well with those of Germans.

349.  The wish to preserve yourself only, rather than expanding your power, is detectable in some philosophers like Spinoza, whose philosophical instincts reflected those of his ill health.  Heirs of Spinoza, who include Darwin and the 'incomprehensibly one sided doctrine of the "struggle for existence"' (292), shows a common route into natural science from being common people, with undistinguished ancestors, who saw the need for survival directly.  English Darwinism in particular reflects the overcrowding of the population.  Real science should focus on abundance not shortage and distress.  The struggle for existence 'is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to life': the real struggle is always around growth and expansion, power and superiority, driven by the will to power 'which is the will of life'.

350.  The struggle with the church is also a struggle of merriment against grave meditation, instincts for the value of life against suspicions about the nature of man.  This struggle is particularly acute in Southern Europe.  Protestantism already shows a dimension of rebellion on behalf of 'the ingenuous, guileless, and superficial' (293), and the French revolution placed power in the hands of good human beings—'the sheep, the ass, the goose, and all who are incurably shallow squallers, ripe for the nut house of "modern ideas"'.

351.  The common people believed that wisdom lay in piety, meekness and seriousness.  They will never understand the passion for knowledge and the search for the biggest problems.  It is the sagacious priest who demonstrates wisdom best and attracts the gratitude of the people.  They appear as martyrs as well as confessers and those who forgive sins.  This is a deep need, and it seems  wrong to deny people.  However, for philosophers, priests still belong to the common people and not knowledge, and they suspect the priestly for this reason.  Philosophical modesty is an invention of the Greeks, and often concealed underlying pride.

352.  Morality can be seen as a kind of clothing and defence, concealing malice beneath apparent duty and virtue.  This makes us domesticated and shameful: it is right to have to disguise modern men and their weakness.  It is the herd animal that needs disguise, not the beast of prey.

353.  Religion appeals because it makes ordinary life seem like some wonderful voluntary discipline of the will, something of high value.  This also abolishes boredom, but this is less important: everything lies in the interpretation placed on everyday life.  Jesus or Paul interpreted ordinary, modest, limited life in the Roman provinces as something of the highest value, something preferable to any other way of life, something that would overcome the world, including Rome and the upper classes.  Buddha also found good natured normal people living abstinently and saw the potential for preventing disruption.  The religious leader identifies and brings suitable types together: everything depends on an initial recognition.

354.  Now we know the limits of the usual conceptions of human consciousness [Leibniz is credited with insight here].  Most of life goes on without our being conscious of it, without ever seeing it in a reflexive  mirror.  Consciousness is mostly superfluous.  Everything depends instead on the capacity for communication, itself derived from the need for communication.  However, this does not mean that those who communicate the most, and make others understand their need, are always the most dependent on others: however this does apply to whole races and generations, where distress and need has produced quick and subtle communication, even if this capacity has subsequently been squandered.  Those most in need of communication were first to develop consciousness, as a necessary 'net of communication between human beings' (298), and this basic need explains all the other things that we are conscious of, including knowledge, thoughts, feelings and actions.  That includes self-knowledge.  Mostly, we think all the time without knowing that we do, since only a small proportion of thought rises to consciousness, and when it does, it takes the form of words, showing the fundamental importance of communication.  This is how language develops and reason enters consciousness.  As we needed increasingly to communicate our sense impressions, so we developed a system of signs, and this enabled us to become conscious of a self.  As a result, consciousness clearly belongs to the social or herd nature of man.  As a result, when we attempt to know ourselves, we constantly become conscious only of the average.  In this way, apparently individual thoughts are continually affected by the social nature of consciousness, the perspective of the herd.  Actions can be personal and unique, but translation into consciousness removes these qualities.  This is what lies behind N's  'phenomenalism and perspectivism'(299).  The conscious world can only be a world of surfaces and signs, designed to be made common and 'meaner', something shallower, 'relatively stupid'(300), something superficial, corrupt and falsified.  The growth of consciousness becomes a danger.  This has got nothing to do with the opposition of subject and object, which is a matter for mere epistemology, 'the metaphysics of the people'.  Nor has it got anything to do with the opposition of thing in itself and appearance, because we can never know enough to make this distinction.  There is no organ from knowledge or truth.  We know only what will be useful in the interests of the herd, and even this sort of utility is only a belief, something imaginary, perhaps the basis of 'that most calamitous stupidity of which we shall perish some day'. [Get yourself out of that corner, matey! Your thoughts must also be herd thoughts etc? Or you are Godlike {Zarathustrian?}, somehow magically exempt from the herd categories that affect every one else, because of your aristocratic inheritance you tell us about {in Ecce Homo}, or your advanced intelligence or your exclusions from normal society? And if you have escaped, can others, in which case your generalization is limited and, especially, lacks a sociological dimension].

355.  The common notion of knowledge indicates that something is reduced to what is familiar.  Too many philosophers use knowledge and the same sense.  This desire to recognize the familiar actually is a result of fear.  Some philosophers think they know the world when they reduce it to the idea [or the concept, we might say], but this avoids coming to grips with the complexity of the world, dealing with what can be known rather than what is strange.  Some people even start with the facts of consciousness.  Natural sciences are better than philosophy or psychology here because at least they decide to investigate what is strange and avoided reduction to the familiar.

356.  Having to choose an occupation is a major source of compulsion for modern people, and they can rapidly come to see themselves as identified with their role.  Coming to a vocation actually is a result of many accidents, and there are many other roles that might be in play.  In the old days, people soul predestination at work, and this helped close off classes and guilds.  Of other times, excessive democracy and confidence seems to dominate, beginning with the Athenians, and exemplify best in modern Americans: here, individuals believe themselves capable of any role, and as a result 'nature ceases and becomes art' (303) [blimey!  Nietzsche has discovered aesthetics as a way of life].  In the case of the Greeks, 'they really became actors' [shades of Goffman on role theory now], and their culture came to dominate the world.  There are signs of this in modern life as well [Nietzsche is arguing that culture has become more autonomous!].  With the emergence of the actor, the architect ceases to become important, since the ability to build, make plans, organize b, requires our faith in a constant future, and also sees the value of man only in the edifices that are built.  That is also true of social life: human beings 'are no longer material for a society' (304) [shades of Lasch and the narcissistic society].  This makes socialism irrelevant and paradoxical.

357.  Is there really a German philosophy?  In the same sense that Plato expresses the Greek soul?  The great Germans have nearly all been exceptions escaping 'the spirit of the race' (304).  Leibniz argued that consciousness is an accident of experience and not its essential attribute, and this profound idea is a good example.  Kant explored the idea, and so did Hegel, in his notion that concepts develop out of each other.  One result was Darwinism [rather odd – I assume in the sense of the evolution of ideas].  All these three were Germans, and as a result, Germans see the inner world as more comprehensive and hidden, with Leibniz; doubt the validity of the knowledge attained by the natural sciences alone, with Kant; and see some deep spiritual meaning in development behind being, of which human logic is a part, with Hegel.  We can even fit in Schopenhauer and his pessimism, but this does not seem exclusively German, since it is based on a wider decline of Christianity.  The other philosophers tried to hide this decline, especially Hegel, but Schopenhauer went for it.  However, paradoxically, a Christian concept of truthfulness can be found even in Schopenhauer, his integrity reflects the Christian conscience become a scientific conscience.  However, at least we no longer see any long-term moral meaning in nature or in human experience: those views now seem mendacious, feminine or weak.  In this sense, the Germans are good Europeans.  However, the question now is whether existence has any meaning at all.  Schopenhauer could only answer this in a preliminary and still Christian way, and the way in which it was appropriated in Germany shows the still lingering desire for some answer [then several other German thinkers are reviewed briefly.  The review includes: 'all Jews become mawkish when they moralize' (308)].  We also see the emergence of nationalism.  Overall, the Germans have never fully accepted pessimism.

358.  Europe is in ruins, typified by the decline in Christianity.  Ironically, the Germans in trying to preserve Christianity have only ended in destroying it [presumably, protestants].  People in Southern Europe understood better that it was really all about enlightenment of the spirit, a different experience of man.  Lutheran theology can be seen as 'the indignation of simplicity against "multiplicity"' (311), an undue focus on corruption, which ignored all the skepticism and tolerance.  Luther was, after all, from the common people with none of the aristocratic virtues or instincts for power.  He was able to unravel the complexity, make the holy book available to everyone, eventually including the philologists who shredded it [historically inaccurate, according to Kaufmann].  He even allowed priests to dabble in sexual intercourse, stripping their mysterious exceptionalism.  Man himself was seen as superhuman.  Priests lost the role to take confession, an effective abolition of exceptionalism.  Luther actually opposed any notion of a higher human being, pushing away the domination of the religious, and, unwittingly, fostering a peasant rebellion as a consequence.  Luther did not know what he was doing, but he did make the European spirit far more shallow, even if more good natured, and encouraged the demands for liberty.  Protestantism might have paved the way from modern science, but it also paves the way for secular scholarship, lacking reference and depth, and featuring 'naive guilelessness and ostentatious ingenuousness' (312).  The nature of the church has been misunderstood: it is intended to rule in the name of the more spiritual human being, opposing crude force, something nobler than the state. [Fails to see the interconnections with the state here though -- simple pluralism, no interest in political multiplicity!]

359.  Modern morality flavors the modern man, someone who is bored and disgusted with himself, ashamed of his existence, poisoned by subversive books 'to which he is not entitled'(314), whose education has become poisonous, and who is out for revenge.  Morality helps him accomplish this revenge, using, for example big moral words like justice or virtue, concealed under a cloak of affability or mildness.  Sometimes these people become saints or sages, and these people are monsters of morality, like Saint Augustine.  Even their claim to possess wisdom is a screen, sometimes for pedagogical purposes, which 'hallows so many lies' (315), and we can only feel sorry for the disciples.  Usually, the screen indicates that the sage has become weary or hard, a premonition of death.  Thus wisdom can be a screen which helps philosophers hide from the real spirit!  [So take that you Germans! This is part of his attack on scholasticism, partly driven by the need to defend his own unreferenced ramblings].

360.  There are different source of causes.  The first is a kind of damned up energy waiting to be discharged somehow, while the second can be seen as a kind of trigger for this discharge, sometimes as a result of something insignificant or accidental.  The latter includes purposes and vocations, which are relatively random and arbitrary.  This is the reverse of the usual view: often the whole supposed purpose is a cosmetic, concealing a lack of any real alternative.

361.  Can we see actors as prototype artists in general?  It is interesting to see acting as developing a 'falseness with a good conscience; the delight in simulation', something which overcomes our apparent character and satisfies a craving for a mask.  Lower class families have had to be adaptable to survive, and this has helped them adapt themselves until they can adjust to anything, but at the price of becoming all surface, mimics, always playing hide and seek.  This can develop over the generations into an entire instinct, which produces the actor, the artist, and even the servant—and perhaps the genius.  Superior persons also develop such a tendency, for example diplomats.  The Jews are the most adaptable people, and have bred generations of actors.  The man of letters is an actor, playing the expert.  Women too have had to be actresses, even when they are most exposed.

362.  Europe seems to be engaged in an age of war, both scientific and popular, and on a large scale.  It has been fed by nationalism, itself a reaction against Napoleon, and one of Napoleon's gifts, to reinstate proper men over businessmen, over feminine tendencies, and over modern ideas.  Napoleon brought back respect for antiquity.  He can even be seen, affirmatively, as wanting to unify Europe.

363.  Women and men never have equal rights in love, because they have different conceptions of love: this indeed is what love really is.  Women expect total devotion, as a kind of faith.  Men want this sort of love from women, and anyone who does not is not a real man, especially men who love like women.  The total devotion of women presupposes no equality on the other side, no desire to fully renounce self.  Women want to be a possession, which means loving someone who wants to take, to accumulate strength and happiness through acquiring women.  This natural difference can never be modified by social contracts or notions of equality and justice.  It is terrible and immoral, but it is natural.  Faithfulness is inherent in women's love, but in men it has to develop, and is not essential: men have a  'more refined and suspicious lust for possession' (320), and continue to expect more benefits even when they have women.

364.  The desire for human company depends on how hungry you are in the first place.  Otherwise, you have to really screw up your courage, grit your teeth, and swallow nausea.  You can attempt to improve other people, praising their good qualities until their virtue fully develops.  You can undergo a kind of autosuggestion, focusing on some detail until it becomes automatically accepted, even seen as indispensable.

365.  We all have to go through the motions to associate with others, develop prudence, adopt the right dress and so on.  However, we can also remain as a ghostly presence, someone that cannot be contacted.  [weird stuff here].  We emulate the quiet of the grave, remain estranged, develop solitude [this whole section, says Kaufmann, relates back to some strange remarks about having to be born posthumously, or gaining immortality only by dying while still alive – I think depression is taking hold again].

366.  We like to get ideas by thinking while outdoors as well as reading books.  You can question the value of the book by asking how animated it is.  Nietzsche claims he can quickly understand the ideas in a book, but dislikes cramped scholastic ones.  He experiences these as oppressive, dominating, the result of a crooked soul.  Specializing possesses people who do it, cramps them, just like every craft.  It is inevitable whenever one experience the artifices of education.  It is a price to pay for mastery, but the alternative is worse, the jack of all trades, 'men of letters'.  All these people do is represent what is publicly available, and masquerade as an expert in exchange for pay [most modern managers].  At least scholarly opinions are not easily translated into finance, and proper specialism is better than posing.  However, it is always tempting for specialists to acquire a sense of probity and solidity by using all sorts of tricks – however their bad conscience will not be managed.

367.  Art is produced either by some overwhelming monologic [like Christianity] or from the need to appeal to an audience.  The former depends on being able to forget the world.

368.  Wagner produces nasty physiological reactions in Nietzsche, as well as aesthetic ones,  things like pains in the stomach.  Music actually should produce bodily ease, a relief from laden life, some perfection.  It suffers when it becomes theatrical, which was Wagner's goal.  The trouble with theatrical performances is that they appeal to the mass and invite us to forget our individuality [in the spirit of the popular aesthetic].  The audience is a herd, something female, something that levels out personal conscience, something stupid.

369.  Taste can oppose creative power: in particular, taste often outgrows personal power, but this still has a creative outcome.  Those who continue to exercise their creative power can neglect their taste altogether, and fail to appreciate even their own work.  [Kaufmann says this can easily be applied to Hegel].

370.  Early comments about modern culture might have been placed by an undue reliance on the pessimism of the 19th century.  This produced an overemphasis on tragic insight as a kind of cultural luxury.  German music was seen against some dionysian spirit which was thought to be still active.  However, the main issue appears now to be romanticism.  Romanticism is connected to a particular kind of suffering, arising from the overfullness of life, which leads to a desire for some tragic insights.  Another kind of suffering results from the opposite, impoverishment, and this leads to a desire for redemption, or intoxication.  Romanticism appeals to both needs, and this will lead to a revaluation of Schopenhauer and Wagner.  Those who are rich in life can afford the view of terrible deeds or destruction: these events are permissible because they are more than compensated by creative energies that can transform them.  Those who are poorest require mildness and goodness, possibly even their own particular gods, or a particularly rational theodicy.  Epicurus and his Christian descendants are also romantics, this time in a rather strange backward way.  We have to work back from the work to the maker, from the ideal to people who need it.  This provides a general principle for aesthetics—whether it is hunger or super abundance that is responsible for this creativity.  Less obviously, is a creative or destructive impulse responsible for this desire for change and becoming?  We can combine these insights into an argument that the desire for destruction and change can be an expression of overflowing energy, something Dionysian, or it can be something arising from underprivilege, as in anarchism.  There is also a will to immortalize, either prompted by love, producing something dithyrambic [as in a poem dedicated to the glory of the gods] , gracious, or expressing the will of someone who is suffering and tormented, needing to generalize from the personal as a form of revenge.  The last is romantic pessimism.  There might be some other kind of pessimism as well, a Dionysian variant.  [Kaufmann says that this marks a shift to contrast the Dionysian not with the apollonian, but with romanticism and Christianity, and not as in the Birth of Tragedy.  This section shows how something new is being suggested, a connection with superabundance, a contrast with ressentiment].

371.  'We' are bound to be misunderstood, but we would not wish otherwise.  We need to keep growing and changing, investigating more and more the roots of conduct in evil, while also aiming for heavenly light, just as trees do [let's hear it for trees, and stuff rhizomes!] .  It is a simultaneous smooth movement up and down: we must do both, and not be just one thing.  It is our fate, even if it will lead to fatality.

372.  We no longer attend very much to our senses, but pursue rather ideas.  Philosophy has come to deny life and suspect its pleasures.  However, ideas are much more seductive and parasitic, and they drained philosophers of life.  Plato's idealism is different, produced by excessive health, but modern philosophers do not have this health.

373.  Scholars are limited by their middle class positions in society which prevents them from examining the really important problems.  They also lack the courage to focus on these.  The pedantic Herbert Spencer is a good example, with his highly limited hopes for some reconciliation of egoism and altruism, a nauseating idea.  Science is similarly limited in its ambitions, relating to things that can be mastered with reason, stripping out rich ambiguity, everything that reflects good taste and reverence for what lies beyond, and replacing it with mechanical work.  This is a 'mental illness, and idiocy' (335).  It is appearances in their full sensuality that need to be grasped, something rich in meaning.  A mechanical world is essentially meaningless: consider what would happen if we sort of music only in terms of formulae!

374.  The extent to which all existence requires interpretation cannot be decided.  Human intellect is obviously limited to its own perspectives, unable to conceive of any other kind of intellect or perspective.  We deal with other possibilities by using phrases like infinite interpretations, implying that there is not really anything unknown.

375.  Human beings are distrustful and skeptical, perhaps because of earlier failures to understand.  However there is an opposite impulse, an Epicurean one in which curiosity about the world persists, in which attempts to develop big words or simple oppositions has no place.  It is this spirit that makes us hesitant about the onward race for certainty.

376.  Artistic work is sometimes punctuated by feelings that goals have been reached, work can be left behind as having achieved its purpose. This is not weariness, though.

377.  This gay science is dedicated to the European homeless, those who do not feel at home in our civilized nation as it is, those who know that such civilization is built on thin ice.  The homeless ['we'] are not conservatives, and not progressives striving for a more equal society, not interested in some 'realm of justice and concord' (338) which would only produce some elaborate Chinese bureaucracy.  We love danger, war and adventure, conquest.  Our new order might include a new slavery, so as to develop the higher humans.  We suspect all this talk about being humane or righteous as being the result of weakness and decline.  We want to resist the religion of pity and all those hysterics who need it.  We do not love humanity, and could not bear to pretend that we do, as French socialists do [specifically Saint-Simon].  Nor do we go along with German nationalism and race hatred, because we are too cosmopolitan and open minded.  Better to live apart, on the mountains, since witnessing current politics only produces rage at its pettiness.  We are too mixed racially to be followers of German racism, which is 'false and obscene' to us (340).  We want to become good Europeans, heirs of the millennia of European spirit.  We want to grow out of Christianity, because we've seen the damage that Christianity [maybe all kinds of faith] caused as a kind of forerunner of nationalism.  We must say yes [to broader divisions than narrow nationalism], even if this is itself a kind of faith. [Kaufmann says the last bits exonerate N from being a proto-Nazi -- but the first bits are still proto-fascist even if not racist fascist like the particular Nazi variant?].

378.  We give too much to people, and get polluted by their concerns, but we must continue to do this, as long as we remember to become bright again.

379.  Nietzsche says he is not a misanthrope, because full on hatred would prevent him feeling contempt!  Contempt has positive effects for him, making him feel like one of the elect, one of the refined.  Hatred is different, bringing about a certain equality, and it contains both honour and fear: he is fearless and more spiritual by contrast, and he knows his books will survive, that he is meeting genuine needs.  However, people need to know that his ability to socialize with others depends on contempt for them.  There is no alternative, since the proximity of other human beings is repelling.  Nature and art is best when it ignores human beings, or mocks them.

380.  We have to distance ourselves, to wander, in order to judge European morality against others, achieve some position outside morality, beyond good and evil, escaping even from everything European.  This may be idiosyncratic.  It is uncertain that we  can achieve this anyway.  We have to approach things with a light spirit to clear away the old faults, things that oppress or inhibit us, weigh us down.  We must overcome the effects of the times in which we live on ourselves, including overcoming the effects of romanticism.

381.  Sometimes, it is good to be not understood.  Sometimes authors intend that others will not be able to understand them, or not just anybody at least.  The nobler spirits select their audience, and exclude the others, and this is the function of style.  Of course it is different for people like the readers of this book.  Nietzsche's style involves quick plunges into problems, avoiding depths.  This does not mean that matters are not properly understood—is depth always important?  Sometimes truth has to be surprised.  These writings should encourage virtue, and not necessarily offer full answers to the innocent which might over-stimulate them. Ignorance should not be concealed, however, and it does produce shame.  However, it is almost inevitable given the growth of knowledge, and it is better than knowing too much, or turning into a professional scholar.  Although a certain scholasticism is occasionally necessary, there are different needs and different digestive requirements [for the spirit].  The spirit requires independence, lightness, speed and freedom, and must avoid becoming stuffed or fat.  We must be like dancers.

382.  We must aim for a new kind of health, stronger but also more audacious and gay.  We must undertake the equivalent of a Mediterranean journey, but such discovery and adventure requires great health, the sort of health that persists even though specific health varies.  His own health is of this great kind, despite the occasional setback, and he hopes that he has discovered something really important as a result, an undiscovered country.  Of course this will make us dissatisfied with present day people, who simply do not approach the ideal.  This is not for everybody, but we want to develop a playful spirit, exploring everything that people take for granted, in a superhuman kind of way, even if it looks occasionally  inhuman, and even if it appears to parody everything that is taken seriously at the moment.  It is a deeper sense of seriousness that needs to be produced, the last act of the new tragedy.

383.  The question of the new tragedy should not be misunderstood.  He still feels surrounded by laughter, even from the spirits of his own book, who urge him to be cheerful, and think of the dance, the morning.  Even simple rustic music would be better than this dire and grave stuff that occasionally surfaces in his work, many people have suggested.  It's nice to be able to please people, but what is being offered is in new and it is easy to misunderstand, and this is the curse of the singer [writer].  It is all a matter of will.  [Kaufmann says that this final section prefaces the Appendix, which consists of lots of nice little songs, pretty volkish for my tastes.  I have not attempted to summarize them.  They seem to use the same old metaphors about views of the landscape, trying to move lightly with the birds, avoiding pity, enjoying nature even the nasty bits, coping with illness, and the like].

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