Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future - EILFE

Beyond Good and Evil
seen in all things that have perfected themselves. Perhaps our great virtue
of historical sense is necessarily opposed to good taste, at least to the very
best taste, and it is only poorly and haltingly, only with effort that we are
able to reproduce in ourselves the trivial as well as greatest serendipities
and transfigurations of human life as they light up every now and then:
those moments and marvels when a great force stands voluntarily still in
front of the boundless and limitless –, the enjoyment of an abundance of
subtle pleasure in suddenly harnessing and fossilizing, in settling down
and establishing yourself on ground that is still shaking. Moderation is
foreign to us, let us admit this to ourselves; our thrill is precisely the thrill
of the infinite, the unmeasured. Like the rider on a steed snorting to go
further onward, we let the reins drop before the infinite, we modern men,
we half-barbarians – and we feel supremely happy only when we are in
the most – danger.
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Hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, eudamonianism: these are all ways
of thinking that measure the value of things according to pleasure and pain,
which is to say according to incidental states and trivialities. They are all
foreground ways of thinking and naivetés, and nobody who is conscious of
both formative powers and an artist’s conscience will fail to regard them
with scorn as well as pity. Pity for you! That is certainly not pity as you
understand it: it is not pity for social “distress,” for “society” with its
sick and injured, for people depraved and destroyed from the beginning
as they lie around us on the ground; even less is it pity for the grumbling,
dejected, rebellious slave strata who strive for dominance – they
call it “freedom.” Our pity is a higher, more far-sighted pity: – we see
how humanity is becoming smaller, how you are making it smaller! – and
there are moments when we look on your pity with indescribable alarm,
when we fight this pity –, when we find your seriousness more dangerous
than any sort of thoughtlessness. You want, if possible (and no “if possible”
is crazier) to abolish suffering. And us – it looks as though we would
prefer it to be heightened and made even worse than it has ever been!
Well-being as you understand it – that is no goal; it looks to us like an
end ! – a condition that immediately renders people ridiculous and despicable
– that makes their decline into something desirable! The discipline
of suffering, of great suffering – don’t you know that this discipline has
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