“Where does it come from, this sickliness? For man is more sick, uncertain, changeable, indeterminate than any other animal, there is no doubt of that — he is the sick animal: how has that come about? Certainly he has also dared more, done more new things, braved more and challenged fate more than all the other animals put together: he, the great experimenter with himself, discontented and insatiable, wrestling with animals, nature, and gods for ultimate domination — he, still unvanquished, eternally directed toward the future, whose own restless energies never leave him in peace, so that his future digs like a spur into the flesh of every present — how should such a courageous and richly endowed animal not also be the most imperiled, the most chronically and profoundly sick of all sick animals?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
There's a current trend among Nietzschean scholarship to vaunt On the Genealogy of Morals as one of Nietzsche's major works, mainly because it's the closest of his later books to having a testable thesis, supposedly (the precepts of slave morality emerging from drives contrary to slave morality). I don't think it's all that major, really just an extended postscript to Beyond Good and Evil, and the apparent model of morality Nietzsche suggests is just mischievous Nietzsche snooking a cock at the priest and his smugness.
ReplyDeleteYou are more on top of Friedrich than I am. I tend to read Nietzsche looking for quotes - amazing riffs - rather than to identify a worldview that might be convincing. scavenging for ransackable material, pencil in hand.
DeleteThe Birth of Tragedy, though, that is one I have studied.
I also taught a class on Nietzsche versus Wagner so that entailed not only reading his several rants against his former benefactor but a whole book about his relationship with Wagner and Cosima.
Supposedly one of the reasons they fell out is that Wagner suggested to Friedrich that his ill health was caused by masturbation and that he should take a wife ASAP.
Nietzsche is very much NOT a system builder in the style of Kant. I think he was born in the wrong time as his snazzy apercu would be perfect for Twitter.
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