# 92. Nietzscheanism

There are two requirements that the creations of the human spirit must satisfy, like flowers, if they are to give us pleasure: they must be *genuine* and *fresh*. Fake truth, i.e. baseless assertion, and fake beauty, i.e. unnatural, elaborate art, are as repugnant to us as an artificial rose. But even if they are genuine, truth and beauty, they lose their appeal as soon as they have grown old and approval and recognition are only paid to them out of habit. The reasons for truth have the best effect on us when the psychological process by which they have found their way into our minds is still like a present experience in us. We not only want to have the truths in our consciousness, but our convictions should also have the after-effects of the difficulties through which they were acquired. A beautiful work of art that does not affect us with immediate, elemental power, but to which our sense has been directed for a long time, loses the gripping effect that a creation has when we first confront it with our eyes and open our ears.

Therefore, from time to time, our whole being needs refreshing. Our spiritual stock must be thrown back into chaos. What has been considered truth for centuries must be doubted and proven anew. What has been admired as beauty for ages must put up with blasé indifference. Nothing can be done about it; that is the fate of the human spirit. Radical destroyers of cultural achievements, spirits who want to start again in all things, will inevitably appear from time to time.

One of the most radical of these spirits is *Friedrich Nietzsche*. What he had printed makes the face of every logical and conscientious philistine soul red with shame. You can boldly take one of his books and write down the opposite of every sentence; then you will come up with roughly what most people besides Nietzsche call "true" and "right". The current followers of the daring doubter may not hold this assertion against me. After all, they would never have arrived at Nietzsche's views of their own accord; they speak and write after him; so they need not feel hurt in their deepest self. After all, many would be quite good philistines if they were not Nietzscheans.

Friedrich Nietzsche questions everything. He not only doubts whether this or that is true, but also asks whether truth is a goal worth striving for at all. He declares war not only on moral prejudices, but on morality as a whole. He not only wants to educate people to live out the purest, most absolute human personality; no, he wants to overcome the prejudice of "man" himself and lead them to the "superman", who has stripped away everything that limits and restricts "man". Nietzsche did not arrive at a vivid image of this "superman". In his "Zarathustra", he fantasized about the superman in sometimes poetically glorious images and aphorisms; he said a lot about what the "superman" *would not* be and what he *would not* have in himself: but the thinker-Icaros was not able to bring it to the positive establishment of this future ideal. Anyone who surveys the many variations in which Nietzsche elaborated his theme will find that the supreme law emerges from them all: man has only the single task of ruthlessly bringing the sum of his personality to bear as strongly as possible and as far as possible. Live as you can best and most fully assert yourself. That is Nietzsche's first basic rule. What you can do, do. The " *will to power*" is therefore the leitmotif of all life. Nietzsche calls slave morality anything that allows itself to be restricted by any moral principles in the development of its sovereign ego. Only the master morality that says "yes" in moral matters, not because it thinks it is "good", but because it wants to, because it can best assert its individual power in this way, is worthy of humanity. These "yes-men" are Nietzsche's ideal people. All the other *slave souls*, who have no purpose of their own, are there for their sake. They are the "good ones" and they have the right to call the actions of others "bad" because they want to and because they have the right master consciousness. But these others are too weak to say an equally forceful "yes". They withdraw from the scene of action to that of conscience; they judge men's actions not by the power they bring, but by their moral feelings. Nietzsche believes that this reverses all moral standards. Only weak, mentally crippled people accept such a point of view. They have to suffer a lot in life because they do not have enough strength to enjoy the pleasures of action. They therefore also feel for the suffering of their fellow human beings. Compassion enters their souls. The man with the master consciousness does not know compassion, he has only contempt for the weak and the sick. They are the "bad" to him, while he is the strong, the healthy, the *good*. Those who are weak, however, turn the tables. They call an action "good" if it causes as little suffering and as much good as possible for their fellow human beings. Where an action impairs the well-being of another person, where it is intended to bring its bearer to power at the expense of another, they call it "evil". "Good" and "evil" are the basic concepts of slave morality, just as "good" and "bad" are those of master morality. Selflessness wants the former, ruthless assertion of the latter. Nietzsche sees it as the basic characteristic and the main deficiency of Western culture that, through the spread of Christianity with its glorification of compassion and selflessness, all master consciousness has disappeared, that slave morality has become the general attitude. "Beyond good and evil" is therefore what Nietzsche wants to fix the moral standpoint of the future; the compassionate rabble with its poor man's odor and the selfless mob with its morally sour attitude are to be thoroughly put a stop to. A true Nietzschean does not like to go where there are many people, because it smells of conscience. That is why Zarathustra-Nietzsche flees from people and goes into solitude. Nietzsche recommends that people grow moral calluses so that they can confidently step on the suffering of their fellow brothers without being tormented by compassion. That those without such calluses are crushed underneath: what does it matter to the oppressors. After all, their master tells them: "Become hard".

Truly, one must not be slow of mind if one is to follow such trains of thought. Anyone who still feels a little discipline in his consciousness will soon fall behind Nietzsche. I felt it was a matter of theoretical honor to follow him everywhere. Sometimes I felt as if my brain were detaching itself from its ground, sometimes the finest fibers of it began to fidget; I thought I could feel them resisting having to leave the positions inherited from all the forefathers so suddenly. But perhaps the primordial ground of things is so difficult to reach that we cannot get to it at all if we do not want to put our brains at risk! Of course, Dr. *Hermann Türck*, who explains Nietzsche's "hyper-morality" simply in terms of moral madness, does not think this way. To presuppose perverse moral instincts in order to explain the erroneous nature of a moral standpoint objectively from its bearer is a little too Nietzschean for me. Nietzsche, however, explains the moral doctrines of the individual philosophers as merely a paraphrase, a cloaking and dressing up of the instincts that reign in their organic depths. But one should not pay this man with his own coins. He covers them with a very thin layer of an elusive precious metal. If we take them in our "poor man's" smelling hands, the magic layer immediately disappears. Türck is therefore not satisfied with this refutation; he shows the necessity of selfless action, the moral necessity of compassion. He proves how necessary both are for the foundation of a true state and the social coexistence of people. But why all this? Anyone who reads Nietzsche and seriously immerses themselves in him does not need a theoretical refutation to get back on track, but several weeks of healthy mountain air and many cold baths. Those who do not read it do not need to be refuted. But those who only half-read it and then repeat it cannot be refuted. It's not even necessary, they will remain healthy cultural giants and their environment will have something to laugh about.

However, Nietzsche should not be bottled. All flavor is lost on this occasion and stale stuff remains. Nietzsche's creations evaporate quickly. That is why we cannot like the book: " *Die Weltanschauung Friedrich Nietzsches *" by Dr. *Hugo Kaatz*. Who is to be served by such compilations of Nietzsche's sayings? At most the third category of people just mentioned. But one should not write books to promote Nietzschegigerltum. Enough of Nietzsche's own views and those of those whose heads he seriously twisted in order to turn up the intellectual pants of the interested parties seeps through. We have had enough of Nietzsche himself. So no more of excerpts from his works.**

Even less edifying, however, are the books by the continuators and expanders of Nietzsche's world view. A sample has *F. N. Finck* has provided a sample. Here, naked, bald egoism is written on the moral banner of the future and a life is demanded which makes the prosperity of the most arbitrary, most capricious individuality, and indeed according to its most urgent needs, the sole task. What develops as a successor to unrestrained genius is shown

this little book. The core of it lies in the fact that it describes a nervous disease that is spreading throughout Central Europe. The cure for it is up to the Nietzschean-minded doctors of the future. Well, we believe that medicine will also progress without the influence and support of this side.

Nietzsche is based on entirely justified philosophical principles. One such principle is the standpoint beyond "good and evil". Moral concepts, like everything else that exists, have evolved over time; they have changed over time and will continue to change. Anyone who does not see the truly moral life in its deeper essence, beyond the respective view of "good" and "evil", does not understand the reasons for it at all. Man must also be led to the point where, apart from all prejudices and doubts, he says a sovereign, ruthless "yes" because he thinks it is good. But with Nietzsche everything becomes a distortion. He not only pulls things out of the ground; no, he also digs around in the soil, sometimes quite senselessly. He wants to organize himself up to the highest spiritual phase, where all compulsion ceases; but he loses all earthly air of thought and soon can no longer breathe at all. His spirit constantly hovers between earthly atmosphere and airless space. Hence the uncertain, wavering, unstable state of his mind. He was first an enthusiastic Wagnerian. He wrote the best book on Wagnerianism: "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music". Later, this whole direction became too heavy for him, too grounded. He didn't want any ground under his feet. Or if he did, then he wanted to translate it "dancing", in light flight. "All art must have light feet

have light feet," is his principle. That is why he listens to "Carmen" with delight and bids farewell to all Wagnerianism. Nietzsche's nerves gradually took on something elastic and resistant: they jumped off like feathers when they approached an object. Nietzsche became more and more an electrical nerve apparatus. He came into contact with one thing in the world, produced an electric spark, but was immediately repelled and propelled to another point; and so it went on; this is how the writings of his last years came into being. The intolerable state at last increased to insanity.

Whoever has the opportunity to recover properly afterwards, and whoever is not a philistine, should read Nietzsche. We recommend it to anyone who doesn't want their brain to turn sour.