CHAPTER I: PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS

Beyond Good and Evil 7 of 301 And could it be believed that it at last seems to
us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first
to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in
raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk. 2. ‘HOW COULD anything
originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to
Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or
the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis
is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of
the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own—in
this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion
and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in
the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the ‘Thing-in-itself— THERE must
be their source, and nowhere else!’—This mode of reasoning discloses the
typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized,
this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through
this ‘belief’ of theirs, they exert themselves for their ‘knowledge,’ for
something that is in the end solemnly christened ‘the Truth.’ The
fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN
Beyond Good and Evil 8 of 301 ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred
even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt,
however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, ‘DE
OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM.’ For it may be doubted, firstly, whether
antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and
antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not
perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives,
besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below—‘frog
perspectives,’ as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. In
spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the
unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for
life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to
selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes
the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being
insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently
opposed things—perhaps even in being essentially identical with them.
Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous
‘Perhapses’! For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order
of philosophers, such as
Beyond Good and Evil 9 of 301 will have other tastes and inclinations, the
reverse of those hitherto prevalent—philosophers of the dangerous ‘Perhaps’
in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I see such new
philosophers beginning to appear. 3. Having kept a sharp eye on
philosophers, and having read between their lines long enough, I now say to
myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the
instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking;
one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and
‘innateness.’ As little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole
process and procedure of heredity, just as little is ‘being-conscious’
OPPOSED to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the
conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts,
and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and its seeming
sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly,
physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life For
example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less
valuable than ‘truth’ such valuations, in spite of their regulative importance
for US, might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of
maiserie, such
Beyond Good and Evil 10 of 301 as may be necessary for the maintenance of
beings such as ourselves. Supposing, in effect, that man is not just the
‘measure of things.’ 4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection
to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The
question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-
preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to
maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori
belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical
fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world
of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world
by means of numbers, man could not live—that the renunciation of false
opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE
UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the
traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which
ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. 5.
That which causes philosophers to be regarded half- distrustfully and half-
mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are—how
often and easily
Beyond Good and Evil 11 of 301 they make mistakes and lose their way, in
short, how childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not enough
honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry
when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner.
They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained
through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in
contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of
‘inspiration’), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or
‘suggestion,’ which is generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is
defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all
advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders,
also, of their prejudices, which they dub ‘truths,’— and VERY far from
having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from
having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be
understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-
ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent,
with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly
mislead) to his ‘categorical imperative’— makes us fastidious ones smile, we
who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old
Beyond Good and Evil 12 of 301 moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more
so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has, as
it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask—in fact, the ‘love of HIS
wisdom,’ to translate the term fairly and squarely—in order thereby to strike
terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance
on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene:—how much of personal
timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray! 6.
It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now
has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of
involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or
immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out
of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the
abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is
always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: ‘What morality do they (or does
he) aim at?’ Accordingly, I do not believe that an ‘impulse to knowledge’ is
the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has
only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument.
But whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man
Beyond Good and Evil 13 of 301 with a view to determining how far they may
have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and cobolds), will find
that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each
one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate
end of existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses. For
every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be
sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be
otherwise—‘better,’ if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an
‘impulse to knowledge,’ some kind of small, independent clock-work, which,
when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the
rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual
‘interests’ of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction—
in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost
indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether
the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom
specialist, or a chemist; he is not CHARACTERISED by becoming this or
that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing
impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive
testimony as to WHO HE
Beyond Good and Evil 14 of 301 IS,—that is to say, in what order the deepest
impulses of his nature stand to each other. 7. How malicious philosophers can
be! I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of
making on Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its
original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies ‘Flatterers of
Dionysius’—consequently, tyrants’ accessories and lick-spittles; besides this,
however, it is as much as to say, ‘They are all ACTORS, there is nothing
genuine about them’ (for Dionysiokolax was a popular name for an actor).
And the latter is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast upon Plato:
he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the mise en scene style of which
Plato and his scholars were masters—of which Epicurus was not a master!
He, the old school-teacher of Samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at
Athens, and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious
envy of Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the
garden-god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out? 8. There is a point in
every philosophy at which the ‘conviction’ of the philosopher appears on the
scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: Adventavit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus.