behind every great human destiny there resounded as a refrain an even greater ‘in vain!’ The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale, What Is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals, aphorism 28 I think that there is no conclusive counterargument to this assertion. When I consider my experience of life,…
A question without an answer; the will for man and the earth is lacking; behind every great human destiny there resounded as a refrain an even greater ‘in vain!’ The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse which hitherto lay over mankind… Any meaning is better than no meaning at all. From…
People should rethink their ideas about cruelty and open up their eyes;… This is my claim: almost everything we call “higher culture” is based on the spiritualization and deepening of cruelty. The “wild animal” has not been killed off at all; it is alive and well, it has just – become divine. Cruelty is…
The ear, the organ of fear, could not have evolved so greatly as it has only in the night and twilight of obscure caves and woods, in accordance with the mode of life of the age of timidity, that is to say the longest human age there has ever been: in bright daylight the…
How can a man take pleasurein nonsense?For wherever in the worldthere is laughterthis is the case;one can say, indeed,that almost everywhere there is happinessthere is pleasure in nonsense. The overturning of experienceinto its opposite,of the purposive into the purposelessness,of the necessary into the arbitrary,but in such a way that this eventcauses no harmand is…
If one considers that man for many hundreds of thousands of years an animal in the highest degree accessible to fear and that everything sudden and unexpected bade him prepare to fight and perhaps to die that even later on, indeed, in social relationships all security depended on the expected and the traditional in…
With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. in the actual act of deception… They are overcome by belief in themselves: It is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them. The founders of religions are distinguished from these great deceivers by…
Today is my birthday. It is early but already several have greeted me with, “happy birthday.” As an adult it has been difficult to dwell on my birthday. “Happy Birthday…” Really!? A pure happiness is not of this world. I am here after 75 years, an astonishing, lucky win. After all the odds of…
Nothing is so conditional that is so circumscribed, as our feeling for the beautiful. Anyone who has tried to divorce it from man’s pleasure would be to find the ground give way beneath him. the ‘beautiful in itself’ is not even a concept, merely a phrase. In the beautiful man sets himself up as…
Decadence (Oxford Dictionary): moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury. The whole is no longer a whole,.. a metaphor for every style of décadence; every time anarchy of atoms, scattering of will, ‘freedom of the individual’, morally speaking expanded into political theory, ‘equal rights for all’. life, equal…
