indeed, my
indulgent friends, I will tell you—here, in this late
preface, which
might easily have [pg
002]
become an obituary or a funeral oration—what I sought in the depths
below: for I have come back, and—I have escaped. Think not that I
will urge you to run the same perilous risk! or that I will urge
you on even to the same solitude! For whoever proceeds on his own
path meets nobody: this is the feature of one's “own path.” No one comes to help him in his
task: he must face everything quite alone—danger, bad luck,
wickedness, foul weather. He goes his own way; and, as is only
right, meets with bitterness and occasional irritation because he
pursues this “own way” of his: for
instance, the knowledge that not even his friends can guess who he
is and whither he is going, and that they ask themselves now and
then: “Well? Is he really moving at all?
Has he still ... a path before him?”—At that time I had
undertaken something which could not have been done by everybody: I
went down into the deepest depths; I tunnelled to the very bottom;
I started to investigate and unearth an old faith
which for thousands of years we philosophers used to build on as
the safest of all foundations—which we built on again and again
although every previous structure fell in: I began to undermine our
faith in
morals. But ye do not understand me?—
3.
So far it is on
Good and Evil that we have meditated least profoundly: this was
always too dangerous a subject. Conscience, a good reputation,
hell, and at times even the police, have not [pg 003] allowed and do not allow of
impartiality; in the presence of morality, as before all authority,
we must not even think, much less
speak: here we must obey! Ever since the beginning of the world, no
authority has permitted itself to be made the subject of criticism;
and to criticise morals—to look upon morality as a problem, as
problematic—what! was that not—is that
not—immoral?—But morality has at its disposal not only every means
of intimidation wherewith to keep itself free from critical hands
and instruments of torture: its security lies rather in a certain
art of enchantment, in which it is a past master—it knows how to
“enrapture.” It can often paralyse
the critical will with a single look, or even seduce it to itself:
yea, there are even cases where morality can turn the critical will
against itself; so that then, like the scorpion, it thrusts the
sting into its own body. Morality has for ages been an expert in
all kinds of devilry in the art of convincing: even at the present
day there is no orator who would not turn to it for assistance
(only hearken to our anarchists, for instance: how morally they
speak when they would fain convince! In the end they even call
themselves “the good and the just”).
Morality has shown herself to be the greatest mistress of seduction
ever since men began to discourse and persuade on earth—and, what
concerns us philosophers even more, she is the veritable Circe of
philosophers. For, to what is it due that, from Plato
onwards, all the philosophic architects in Europe have built in
vain? that everything which they themselves honestly believed to be
aere perennius [pg 004] threatens to subside or is already laid
in ruins? Oh, how wrong is the answer which, even in our own day,
rolls glibly off the tongue when this question is asked:
“Because they have all neglected the
prerequisite, the examination of the foundation, a critique of all
reason”—that fatal answer made by Kant, who has certainly
not thereby attracted us modern philosophers to firmer and less
treacherous ground! (and, one may ask apropos of this, was it not
rather strange to demand that an instrument should criticise its
own value and effectiveness? that the intellect itself should
“recognise” its own worth, power,
and limits? was it not even just a little ridiculous?) The right
answer would rather have been, that all philosophers, including
Kant himself were building under the seductive influence of
morality—that they aimed at certainty and “truth” only in appearance; but that in reality
their attention was directed towards “majestic moral edifices,”
to use once more Kant's innocent mode of expression, who deems it
his “less brilliant, but not
undeserving” task and work “to level
the ground and prepare a solid foundation for the erection of those
majestic moral edifices” (Critique of Pure
Reason, ii. 257). Alas! He did not succeed in his
aim, quite the contrary—as we must acknowledge to-day. With this
exalted aim, Kant was merely a true son of his century, which more
than any other may justly be called the century of exaltation: and
this he fortunately continued to be in respect to the more valuable
side of this century (with that solid piece of sensuality, for
example, which he introduced into his theory of [pg 005] knowledge). He, too, had been bitten by
the moral tarantula, Rousseau; he, too, felt weighing on his soul
that moral fanaticism of which another disciple of Rousseau's,
Robespierre, felt and proclaimed himself to be the executor:
de fonder sur la terre l'empire de la sagesse,
de la justice, et de la vertu. (Speech of June 4th,
1794.) On the other hand, with such a French fanaticism in his
heart, no one could have cultivated it in a less French, more deep,
more thorough and more German manner—if the word German is still
permissible in this sense—than Kant did: in order to make room for
his “moral
kingdom,” he found himself compelled to add to it an
indemonstrable world, a logical “beyond”—that was why he required his critique
of pure reason! In other words, he would not have
wanted it, if he had not deemed one thing to be more
important than all the others: to render his moral kingdom
unassailable by—or, better still, invisible to, reason,—for he felt
too strongly the vulnerability of a moral order of things in the
face of reason. For, when confronted with nature and history, when
confronted with the ingrained immorality of nature and history,
Kant was, like all good Germans from the earliest times, a
pessimist: he believed in morality, not because it is demonstrated
through nature and history, but despite its being steadily
contradicted by them. To understand this “despite,” we should perhaps recall a somewhat
similar trait in Luther, that other great pessimist, who once urged
it upon his friends with true Lutheran audacity: “If we could conceive by reason alone how that God who
shows so much [pg
006]
wrath and malignity could be merciful and just, what use should we
have for faith?” For, from the earliest times, nothing has
ever made a deeper impression upon the German soul, nothing has
ever “tempted” it more, than that
deduction, the most dangerous of all, which for every true Latin is
a sin against the intellect: credo quia absurdum est.—With it
German logic enters for the first time into the history of
Christian dogma; but even to-day, a thousand years later, we
Germans of the present, late Germans in every way, catch the scent
of truth, a possibility of truth, at the back
of the famous fundamental principle of dialectics with which Hegel
secured the victory of the German spirit over Europe—“contradiction moves the world; all things contradict
themselves.” We are pessimists—even in logic.
4.
But logical
judgments are not the deepest and most fundamental to which the
daring of our suspicion descends: the confidence in reason which is
inseparable from the validity of these judgments, is, as
confidence, a moral phenomenon ... perhaps
German pessimism has yet to take its last step? Perhaps it has once
more to draw up its “credo” opposite
its “absurdum” in a terrible manner?
And if this book is pessimistic even in regard to morals, even
above the confidence in morals—should it not be a German book for
that very reason? For, in fact, it represents a contradiction, and
one which it does not fear: in it confidence in morals is
retracted—but why? Out of morality! Or how [pg 007] shall we call that which takes place in
it—in us? for our taste inclines to the
employment of more modest phrases. But there is no doubt that to us
likewise there speaketh a “thou
shalt”; we likewise obey a strict law which is set above
us—and this is the last cry of morals which is still audible to us,
which we too must live: here, if anywhere, are we
still men
of conscience, because, to put the matter in plain
words, we will not return to that which we look upon as decayed,
outlived, and superseded, we will not return to something
“unworthy of belief,” whether it be
called God, virtue, truth, justice, love of one's neighbour, or
what not; we will not permit ourselves to open up a lying path to
old ideals; we are thoroughly and unalterably opposed to anything
that would intercede and mingle with us; opposed to all forms of
present-day faith and Christianity; opposed to the lukewarmness of
all romanticism and fatherlandism; opposed also to the artistic
sense of enjoyment and lack of principle which would fain make us
worship where we no longer believe—for we are artists—opposed, in
short, to all this European feminism (or idealism, if this term be
thought preferable) which everlastingly “draws upward,” and which in consequence
everlastingly “lowers” and
“degrades.” Yet, being men of
this conscience, we feel that we
are related to that German uprightness and piety which dates back
thousands of years, although we immoralists and atheists may be the
late and uncertain offspring of these virtues—yea, we even consider
ourselves, in a certain respect, as their heirs, the executors of
their inmost will: a pessimistic will, as I have already
[pg 008] pointed out, which
is not afraid to deny itself, because it denies itself with
joy! In us is consummated, if you
desire a formula—the autosuppression of morals.
5.
But, after all,
why must we proclaim so loudly and with such intensity what we are,
what we want, and what we do not want? Let us look at this more
calmly and wisely; from a higher and more distant point of view.
Let us proclaim it, as if among ourselves, in so low a tone that
all the world fails to hear it and us!
Above all, however, let us say it slowly.... This preface comes
late, but not too late: what, after all, do five or six years
matter? Such a book, and such a problem, are in no hurry; besides,
we are friends of the lento,
I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain—perhaps I am
one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At
present it is not only my habit, but even my taste—a perverted
taste, maybe—to write nothing but what will drive to despair every
one who is “in a hurry.” For
philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one
thing above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves spare
moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the leisurely art of the
goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow,
fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason
philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very
reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of
“work”: that is to say, of haste, of
unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, [pg 009] which is intent upon “getting things done” at once, even every book,
whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not
“get things done” so hurriedly: it
teaches how to read well: i.e.
slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts,
with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes ... my
patient friends, this book appeals only to perfect readers and
philologists: learn to read me well!
Ruta, near
Genoa,
Autumn,
1886.