Wednesday, January 05, 2005

From Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morality"

From First Treatise: "Good and Evil," "Good and Bad"

[Out] of the vengeful cunning of powerlessness the oppressed, downtrodden, violated say to themselves: "let us be different from the evil ones, namely good! And good is what everyone is who does not do violence, who injures no one, who doesn't attack, who doesn't retaliate, who leaves vengeance to God, who keeps himself concealed, as we do, who avoids all evil, and in general demands very little of life, like us, the patient, humble, righteous"... (13)

From Second Treatise: "Guilt," "Bad Conscience," and Related Matters

[B]ack then, when humanity was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life on earth was more lighthearted than it is now that there are pessimists. The darkening of the heavens over man has always increased proportionally as man has grown ashamed of man. (7)

From Third Treatise: "What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?"

There is, strictly speaking, absolutely no science "withouit presuppositions," the thought of such a science is unthinkable, paralogical: a philosophy, a "belief" must always be there first so that science can derive a direction from it, a meaning, a boundary, a method, a right to existence. (Whoever understands it the other way around - for example, whoever sets out to place philosophy "on a strictly scientific foundation" - first needs to turn not only philosophy but also truth itself on its head...) (24)

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