Profound. Simply profound. He writes incredibly eloquently and captures human history, nature, and an important issue of his time that still remains topical. Truly brilliant. Read this. Makes other authors sound trivial after reading.

Only weakness is that the diction can be pretty tough and Nietzsche is very cultured in his references (can make it tough to read). ( )

Divided into 3 essays. The first is reasonably clear but pretty objectionable and not too well argued, the second is a little less clear but a lot more interesting and more convincing, the third is the longest and meandering, not cohesive, sometimes contradictory and generally confusing. If it was just the first two or with a much edited third I'd probably consider it a 3 star thing. The first essay seems to be focused around a claim that the weak and downtrodden almost forced Christian ideas along the lines of "the meek will inherit the earth" onto the strong, ruining their more noble morality - this is bizarre in the sense that there's no reason to assume this, especially compared to the opposite. He refers to this negative morality as "Jewish" which is gross - he regularly talks about each "race" or "people" as a whole, as if the poor can poison a huge race of people, and his ideas about health in this sense are complete racist nonsense. The third essay is devoted to the "ascetic ideal", which he defines and then seemingly blames for all the world's evil, attributing things to it which make no sense and don't fit with his definition. In general I found that his ideas didn't fit together or make a coherent set - he often contradicts himself in short asides and seems to be addressing himself to things I don't really get.

On the plus side it's written pretty well - even when it doesn't form a coherent whole, his use of language means you can be pretty clear on what each sentence is saying without needing to read it many times over. He has quite a lot of interesting ideas, but scattered as they are, they're not really pleasant to try and extract from the rest of the text. I am absolutely sure my reading of the text was poor and I realise my review is gonna sound ignorant. I realise his importance and that a lot of people hold this in high regard and I'm sure if I read better and had more grounding in his other texts I'd get more out of it. Take this as one beginner at philosophy's attempt to understand and problems doing so.

Also dude really needs to learn about a lil thing called MATERIAL CONDITIONS ( )

All deep things like masks; The deepest things hate even metaphors and symbols. Isn't the opposite the right disguise for the shame of a deity?

Scientific and ascetic ideals, both of which were originally born in the same soil: that is, they have the same excessive admiration for truth (or, more precisely, the same belief in the inestimability and incontrovertible nature of truth), and it is this common belief that makes them necessarily Allies - and therefore, when they are opposed, they can only be opposed and challenged jointly.

"Beauty," Kant declared, "is enjoyment without selfish gain." No selfish interests! Compare this definition with that given by the true observer and artist Stendhal: Stendhal speaks of beauty as "the promise of happiness," which negates and excludes exactly what Kant emphasizes in defining the state of beauty. Who is right? Is it Kant or Stendhal? Our aestheticians have taken pains to add weight to Kant's scale, saying that the magic of beauty can even enable one to look at the nude image of a woman "without selfish interest."

Perhaps the subject, or, to put it more generally, the soul, is by far the best creed on earth, because it enables the great majority of the dead, the weak, and the oppressed of all kinds to play that subtle self-deception, to interpret weakness itself as freedom, and their existence as such and so, as their merit.

The slave revolt in morality begins when resentment itself becomes creative and takes on value: the resentment of such creatures that they are not allowed to have a real reaction, that is, to react in a productive way, but only to protect themselves from harm through some imaginary revenge. All high morals grow into themselves from a triumphant "affirmation," while slave morals from the beginning say no to some "outside," to some "somewhere else," or to some "not themselves:" this "no" is their creative act.

The "well-born" do feel themselves to be "happy," and they do not compare themselves with their enemies before artificially creating their happiness, or making people believe in it, or deceiving them into believing it (as is the habit of all hate-filled people). They are full of power, so they must be full of motivation. In the same way, they know that, being full and powerful, the result must necessarily be active people, for whom action cannot be separated from happiness, and they regard active action as a necessary component of happiness.

When man was not ashamed of his cruelty, life on earth was clearer than it is today for pessimists. As man breeds shame before man, the sky above man grows gloomier with it. That tired pessimistic look, that distrust of the mystery of life, that cold 'no' uttered by the disgust of life, these are not the signs of the most evil years of the human lineage: Rather, they appear in the light of day as swamp plants when the swamp to which they belong is formed, meaning that morbid weakening and moralization in which the animal "man" finally learns to be ashamed of all his instincts.

We want to deny at least one thing here: whoever regards those "good men" as only enemies will only make vicious enemies. They are men who, on the one hand, are strictly limited by custom, admiration, etiquette, gratitude, even mutual surveillance and jealousy; On the other hand, they show great mutual understanding, self-restraint, gentleness, loyalty, pride, and friendship in their relations with each other - and when it comes to the outside world, to strange things and strange people, they are no better than wild beasts out of their cages. There they enjoy freedom from all social coercion, relieve in barbarism the tension created by the long seclusion and confinement in the harmonious community, and restore the unfettered beast mentality.

"What clues does the study of language, in particular etymological research, provide for the history of the development of moral concepts?"

Such a great project - to historicise what other philosophers (even now) try to make ahistorical. Too bad Nietzsche himself cannot escape historicisation. Like all the race stuff. Yikes. ( )

EBB-6