Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche · Public domain edition · 68 cards · 21 chapters
Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil argues that philosophers' systems express unconscious instincts and drives rather than disinterested truth-seeking, and that moral and metaphysical certainties rest on unfounded assumptions. This deck covers the opening chapter's claims about metaphysics, will, conscious thought, and the status Nietzsche demands for psychology.
1 / 68
Chapter 1 · Question
What is the fundamental belief of metaphysicians, according to Nietzsche?
WakeCards · wakecards.com · Big ideas. Quick review.
Chapter 1 · Answer
The author argues that metaphysicians of all times share a typical prejudice: THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. They assume that things of the highest value (truth, the unselfish) must originate from an opposite source, in the intransitory 'Thing-in-itself,' never in this transitory world. Nietzsche notes it never occurred to even the wariest of them to doubt this on the very threshold, where doubt was most necessary.
WakeCards · wakecards.com · Big ideas. Quick review.
Arrow keys move between cards. Space or Enter flips.
All questions and answers
Every card in the deck, in reading order. Click a chapter to expand. The reviewer above uses the same content.
CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS (part 1)4 cards
What is the fundamental belief of metaphysicians, according to Nietzsche?
The author argues that metaphysicians of all times share a typical prejudice: THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. They assume that things of the highest value (truth, the unselfish) must originate from an opposite source, in the intransitory 'Thing-in-itself,' never in this transitory world. Nietzsche notes it never occurred to even the wariest of them to doubt this on the very threshold, where doubt was most necessary.
Chapter 1
How does Nietzsche describe the relation of conscious thinking to instinct in philosophers?
The author argues that the greater part of conscious thinking, including philosophical thinking, must be counted among the instinctive functions. 'Being-conscious' is not opposed to the instinctive in any decisive sense; a philosopher's conscious thinking is secretly influenced by his instincts and forced into definite channels. Behind all logic lie valuations, or more plainly, physiological demands for the maintenance of a definite mode of life.
Chapter 1
What does Nietzsche say about the falseness of an opinion as an objection?
The author argues that the falseness of an opinion is not for him any objection to it. The question is how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing. He is inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions, including synthetic judgments a priori, are the most indispensable to us, and that renouncing false opinions would be a renunciation of life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life places such a philosophy beyond good and evil.
Chapter 1
What does Nietzsche claim every great philosophy consists of?
The author argues that every great philosophy up till now has consisted of the confession of its originator, a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography. The moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy is the true vital germ from which the entire plant grew. He does not believe an 'impulse to knowledge' is the father of philosophy; another impulse uses knowledge as an instrument. In the philosopher nothing is impersonal; his morality testifies to who he is.
Chapter 1
CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS (part 2)4 cards
What does Nietzsche say psychologists should stop treating as the cardinal instinct of organic life?
The author argues psychologists should reconsider putting down self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results. He warns against superfluous teleological principles, calling the instinct of self-preservation one of them, owed to Spinoza's inconsistency.
Chapter 2
How does Nietzsche describe the will, against Schopenhauer's account?
The author argues willing is complicated, a unity only in name. It involves a plurality of sensations (the conditions 'away from which' and 'towards which' we go, plus muscular sensation), thinking (a ruling thought in every act of will), and above all an emotion—the emotion of command. Since we are both commanding and obeying parties, we deceive ourselves with the synthetic term 'I.'
Chapter 2
Why does Nietzsche reject 'I think' as an immediate certainty?
The author argues 'immediate certainty,' 'absolute knowledge,' and 'the thing in itself' involve a contradictio in adjecto. Analyzing 'I think' reveals daring assertions: that it is I who think, that something must think, that thinking is an activity of a cause, that there is an ego, and that I already know what thinking is. It assumes comparison with other known states, so it has no immediate certainty.
Chapter 2
What does Nietzsche say about how thoughts arrive, against logicians?
The author emphasizes that a thought comes when 'it' wishes, not when 'I' wish, so it is a perversion of the facts to say the subject 'I' is the condition of the predicate 'think.' 'One thinks,' but that this 'one' is the famous old ego is only a supposition, not an immediate certainty. Even 'one' contains an interpretation of the process, not the process itself.
Chapter 2
CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS (part 3)4 cards
How does Nietzsche define psychology in this chapter?
The author argues psychology should be conceived as the morphology and development-doctrine of the will to power. He claims nobody has yet harboured this notion, and that moral prejudices have penetrated even the most intellectual, apparently unprejudiced world, operating injuriously, obstructively, blindingly, and distortingly.
Chapter 3
What does a physio-psychology have to contend with, according to Nietzsche?
The author argues a proper physio-psychology must contend with unconscious antagonism in the investigator's own heart. Doctrines of the reciprocal conditionalness of good and bad impulses, or of good impulses deriving from bad ones, cause distress and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience. He adds that regarding hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as life-conditioning emotions provokes sea-sickness.
Chapter 3
What does Nietzsche say about sailing beyond morality?
The author urges that once one has drifted into this dangerous domain of knowledge, one should set one's teeth, open one's eyes, and keep a hand fast on the helm. He says we sail right over morality and may destroy the remains of our own morality by voyaging there, but asks what we matter. He calls it not a sacrifizio dell' intelletto.
Chapter 3
What status does Nietzsche demand for psychology, and why?
The author argues the psychologist who makes this sacrifice is entitled to demand that psychology once more be recognized as queen of the sciences, with the other sciences existing for its service and equipment. He states psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems, and insists the sacrifice is not the sacrifizio dell' intelletto.
Chapter 3
CHAPTER II. THE FREE SPIRIT4 cards
According to Nietzsche, what foundation does knowledge rest upon?
The author argues that knowledge rests on a "solidified, granite-like foundation of ignorance." The will to knowledge is built upon a far more powerful will to ignorance, uncertainty, and untruth—not as its opposite but as its refinement. He claims humans have simplified and falsified the world around them to enjoy life, freedom, and gaiety, and that knowledge loves error because, as living itself, it loves life.
Chapter 4
Why does Nietzsche warn philosophers against martyrdom for truth?
The author argues that suffering "for the truth's sake" spoils the innocence and neutrality of conscience, making one headstrong against objections and brutalized in struggle. He says no philosopher has ever carried his point, and that honest interrogative marks after one's doctrines may be more laudable than solemn pantomime before accusers. He urges philosophers to flee into concealment, wear masks, and choose a good, free solitude instead.
Chapter 4
What does Nietzsche say every philosopher must study, and why?
The author argues that the long, serious study of the average man—with its disguise, self-overcoming, and bad intercourse—is a necessary part of every philosopher's life, perhaps the most disagreeable part. A select man instinctively seeks privacy from the crowd, but for knowledge he must eventually say "the devil take my good taste" and go down and inside, since "the rule" is more interesting than the exception.
Chapter 4
How does Nietzsche distinguish exoteric from esoteric viewing?
The author states the essential distinction is not simply that the exoteric class stands outside, but that it views things from below upwards, while the esoteric class views things from above downwards. He adds that there are heights of the soul from which tragedy no longer operates tragically, and that deep insights appear as follies or crimes when they reach those not predestined for them.
Chapter 4
CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD4 cards
What does Nietzsche identify as the three dangerous prescriptions linked to the religious neurosis?
Nietzsche says that wherever the religious neurosis has appeared, it is connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence. He adds that it cannot be determined with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or whether any causal relation exists at all, noting sudden sensuality as a regular symptom that transforms into penitential paroxysms.
Chapter 5
How does Nietzsche characterize early Christian faith, and how does it differ from Luther's or Cromwell's?
The author argues early Christian faith is not the sincere, austere slave-faith of a Luther or Cromwell, northern barbarians of the spirit. Rather it resembles Pascal's faith, which he calls a continuous suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason not slain at once. This faith is sacrifice of all freedom, pride, and self-confidence of spirit, involving subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.
Chapter 5
Why did the mighty men of the world bow before the saint, according to Nietzsche?
Nietzsche says the mightiest men bowed before the saint as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation. They divined behind his frail appearance a superior force testing itself by subjugation—strength of will they recognized as their own love of power. They also suspected some great danger behind such self-negation. In short, the Will to Power obliged them to halt and question him.
Chapter 5
What does Nietzsche say about the Jewish Old Testament compared with the New Testament?
Nietzsche claims the Old Testament contains men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with it. He calls the taste for the Old Testament a touchstone of 'great' and 'small,' and argues the New Testament, a kind of Rococo of taste, appeals more to small souls. Binding both into one 'Bible' he calls perhaps the greatest audacity and sin against the Spirit.
Chapter 5
CHAPTER IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES4 cards
According to aphorism 68, how do memory and pride conflict?
The author describes a conflict: memory says "I did that," while pride replies "I could not have done that" and remains inexorable. Eventually, the memory yields. This illustrates how pride can override and revise a person's recollection of their own actions, with memory giving way rather than pride.
Chapter 6
What does Nietzsche say about the will to overcome an emotion?
In aphorism 117, the author argues that the will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another emotion, or of several other emotions. So the attempt to master a feeling is itself driven by competing feelings rather than by some neutral rational faculty standing above them.
Chapter 6
What does aphorism 108 claim about moral phenomena?
The author asserts that there are no such things as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. In other words, actions and events are not inherently moral; morality is a reading or interpretation imposed upon them, not a property found in the phenomena themselves.
Chapter 6
What warning does aphorism 146 give about fighting monsters and gazing into abysses?
The author warns that whoever fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. He adds that if one gazes long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. The point concerns how prolonged struggle and scrutiny can transform the one who engages in them.
Chapter 6
CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS (part 1)4 cards
What does Nietzsche say a 'Science of Morals' should do first?
The author argues that what is needed now is modest groundwork: collecting material, surveying and classifying the immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth and distinctions of worth that live, grow, and perish. This would prepare a theory of types of morality. He says past philosophers instead presumptuously tried to 'give a basis' to morality, treating it as something given.
Chapter 7
According to Nietzsche, what do systems of morals actually reveal?
The author argues that systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions. They may justify the author, tranquilize him, humble him, take revenge, conceal, or glorify him. He suggests Kant's morals hint that what is estimable in him is knowing how to obey, and that others should obey likewise.
Chapter 7
What does Nietzsche say is essential and valuable in every system of morals?
The author argues that every system of morals is a tyranny against nature and reason, but that this is no objection. What is essential and invaluable is that it is a long constraint. He compares this to the metrical constraint and tyranny of rhyme that let language attain strength and freedom, and claims long obedience in one direction produces virtue, art, and reason.
Chapter 7
How does Nietzsche explain the English observance of Sunday?
The author argues that industrious races find idleness a hardship, and that it was a master stroke of English instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday so the Englishman unconsciously longs for his workday again. He calls it a cleverly devised fast, noting similar intercalary days of restraint existed in the ancient world, though not always regarding work.
Chapter 7
CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS (part 2)4 cards
According to Nietzsche, what did the Jews accomplish through the inversion of valuations?
The author argues the Jews, called a people "born for slavery" by Tacitus and the ancient world, performed the miracle of inverting valuations, giving life on earth a new and dangerous charm for two millennia. Their prophets fused "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," and "sensual" into one, coined "world" as reproach, and made "poor" synonymous with "saint." With them, the author claims, the slave-insurrection in morals begins.
Chapter 8
What does Nietzsche mean by the "moral hypocrisy of the commanding class" in Europe?
The author argues the herd-instinct of obedience has grown so strong that commanders now lack independent individuals; those who command suffer bad consciences and must deceive themselves into seeming to merely obey. They pose as executors of older higher orders—predecessors, constitution, justice, law, God—or as "first servants of their people." He calls this the moral hypocrisy of the commanding class, and cites Napoleon's appearance as proof of the relief absolute rulers bring.
Chapter 8
How does Nietzsche describe the man of mixed descent in an age of dissolution?
The author argues such a man inherits contrary instincts and standards of value that struggle within him and are seldom at peace; on average he is weak, desiring the war inside to end. Happiness appears to him as a soothing medicine—Epicurean or Christian—a repose, undisturbedness, final unity, the "Sabbath of Sabbaths" of St. Augustine. But if the conflict acts as added stimulus and he has self-mastery, he becomes an enigmatic conqueror type, like Alcibiades, Caesar, Frederick the Second, or Leonardo.
Chapter 8
According to Nietzsche, how does fear of the neighbor become the mother of morals?
The author argues that while only gregarious utility determines moral estimates, there can be no "morality of love to one's neighbour"; sympathy is still ultra-moral, as in the best Roman period. Once society is secured against external dangers, strong instincts formerly fostered—love of enterprise, revengefulness, rapacity, love of power—are felt as dangerous and branded immoral. Whatever threatens the community or equality becomes the moral perspective; fear is the mother of morals.
Chapter 8
CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS4 cards
What does Nietzsche claim the scientific man's emancipation from philosophy is an after-effect of?
The author argues that the scientific man's declaration of independence from philosophy—his self-glorification and self-conceitedness—is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and disorganization. After science resisted theology, whose hand-maid it had long been, it now proposes to lay down laws for philosophy and to play the philosopher on its own account.
Chapter 10
According to Nietzsche, what is the scientific man, and what danger does his mediocrity pose?
The author argues the scientific man is a commonplace type with commonplace virtues: non-ruling, non-authoritative, non-self-sufficient, industrious, and moderate. His worst and most dangerous trait stems from the instinct of mediocrity of his type—a 'Jesuitism of mediocrity' that instinctively labours to destroy the exceptional man and to relax every bent bow, doing so with indulgent, confiding sympathy.
Chapter 10
How does Nietzsche describe the objective man, the ideal man of learning?
The author argues the objective man is one of the most costly instruments that exist, but only an instrument—a mirror, not a purpose in himself—whose place is in the hand of one more powerful. He is accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known, regards his own personality as accidental or disturbing, and is serene not from lack of trouble but from incapacity to grasp his own trouble.
Chapter 10
What verdict does the genuine philosopher demand from himself, and how does he live?
The author argues the philosopher demands from himself a verdict—a Yea or Nay—not concerning science but concerning life and the worth of life, and must seek the right to this through extensive, often disturbing experiences. Unlike the populace's notion of wisdom as prudent withdrawal, the genuine philosopher lives 'unphilosophically' and 'unwisely,' above all imprudently, risking himself constantly.
Chapter 10
CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES (part 1)4 cards
What does Nietzsche suggest about modern Europeans and their virtues in section 214?
The author argues that modern Europeans likely still have virtues, but not the sincere, massive virtues of their grandfathers. Instead, if they must have virtues, they will be those agreeing with their most secret inclinations and ardent requirements, to be sought in their labyrinths. He notes that believing in one's own virtues resembles the old "good conscience," a pigtail their grandfathers wore.
Chapter 11
How does section 215 describe modern men's relation to different moralities?
Nietzsche compares modern men to a planet determined by two suns of different colours, shining red, green, and motley. Owing to the complicated mechanism of our "firmament," we are determined by different moralities; our actions shine alternately in different colours, are seldom unequivocal, and are often motley-coloured.
Chapter 11
What does Nietzsche say about loving one's enemies in section 216?
The author says loving one's enemies has been well learnt and occurs thousands of times on large and small scales. At times something higher occurs: we learn to despise when we love, and precisely when we love best—unconsciously, without noise or ostentation, with the shame and secrecy of goodness that forbids pompous virtue formulas. Morality as attitude is opposed to modern taste.
Chapter 11
What does section 219 say about moral judging and condemning?
Nietzsche argues that moral judging and condemning is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those less so, an indemnity for being badly endowed by nature, and an opportunity to acquire spirit and become subtle—malice spiritualises. They are glad a standard exists making the over-endowed equal to them, contending for "equality of all before God," and almost need belief in God for this.
Chapter 11
CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES (part 2)4 cards
What does Nietzsche claim all moral philosophy so far has been, and what has most injured virtue?
The author argues that moral philosophy has been tedious and soporific, and that virtue has been more injured by the tediousness of its advocates than by anything else. He nonetheless calls their general usefulness desirable, hoping few people reflect on morals so that morals never become interesting.
Chapter 12
How does Nietzsche characterize English utilitarians and their aim?
The author argues utilitarians follow Bentham (who followed Helvetius) without new thought, tainted by the old English vice of cant or moral Tartuffism under a scientific guise. He claims they secretly want English morality, meaning comfort and fashion, recognized as authoritative, and deny that general welfare is a graspable ideal rather than a nostrum.
Chapter 12
What is Nietzsche's thesis about higher culture and cruelty?
The author's thesis is that almost everything called higher culture rests on the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty. The 'wild beast' was never slain but transfigured. He argues enjoyment of tragedy, sublimity, and even self-denial and knowledge-seeking contain cruelty, including cruelty toward oneself, not merely delight in others' suffering.
Chapter 12
What does Nietzsche say about the spirit's will and the seeker of knowledge?
The author argues the spirit wills mastery, simplifying and assimilating the new to the old, and can also shut out knowledge according to its digestive power. Against this, the man of knowledge insists on taking things profoundly, a cruelty of intellectual conscience; every desire for knowledge contains a drop of cruelty.
Chapter 12
CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES (part 3)1 cards
What does the chapter say inspires both respect and fear toward woman?
The author argues it is woman's nature, which he calls more natural than man's: her carnivora-like cunning flexibility, tiger-claws beneath the glove, naivete in egoism, untrainableness, innate wildness, and the incomprehensibleness of her desires and virtues. Alongside fear, he says, man feels sympathy because she seems more afflicted, vulnerable, necessitous of love, and condemned to disillusionment.
Chapter 13
CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES (part 1)4 cards
What does Nietzsche mean by calling Germans 'the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow'?
The author argues that Germans have 'as yet no today': they are simultaneously young and aged, too ripe yet rich in futurity. He presents this as a genuine token of the German soul, which he describes as manifold, formless, and inexhaustible, expressing it through his analysis of Wagner's Mastersinger overture as magnificent but lacking southern clarity and grace.
Chapter 14
According to Nietzsche, what physiological process underlies the European democratic movement?
The author argues that behind moral and political formulas like 'civilization' or 'progress' lies an immense physiological process: the assimilation of Europeans, their detachment from climatic and hereditary conditions, and the emergence of a super-national, nomadic species with maximum powers of adaptation. He claims this process will produce both a levelling gregarious type fit for subtle slavery and, in exceptional cases, stronger men—an involuntary arrangement for rearing tyrants.
Chapter 14
Why does Nietzsche call German depth into question, and what does he suggest it often is?
The author proposes a 'vivisection of the German soul' to test whether German depth is something different and worse. He argues the German soul is manifold and aggregated rather than built, that Germans drag at everything they experience and digest events badly, and that 'German depth' is often only a difficult, hesitating digestion. He also calls German honesty a convenient and dangerous Mephistophelean disguise.
Chapter 14
In the old patriots' debate, what do they disagree about regarding a 'great' statesman?
One old patriot argues that a statesman who drags his people into 'high politics,' making them sacrifice reliable virtues and narrowing their minds to national tastes, would be called great by the masses—but he questions this. The other insists such a statesman must be great, since otherwise he could not have done it. The first retorts: 'Strong and mad! NOT great!'
Chapter 14
CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES (part 2)4 cards
According to Nietzsche, why is Luther's Bible the best German book?
The author argues that in Germany the pulpit was the only public and approximately artistic form of discourse, so the preacher alone had a conscience in his ears for the weight of syllables and the movement of sentences. Oratory was seldom attained by Germans or attained too late. Therefore the masterpiece of German prose is the masterpiece of its greatest preacher, and compared with Luther's Bible almost everything else is merely 'literature.'
Chapter 15
How does Nietzsche divide nations by kind of genius?
The author distinguishes two kinds of genius: one that engenders and seeks to engender, another that lets itself be fructified and brings forth. Among nations, the Greeks and French are the pregnant, perfecting kind; the Jews, Romans, and (he modestly suggests) Germans are the fructifying kind, driven out of themselves and longing for foreign races. These two kinds seek each other like man and woman but also misunderstand each other like man and woman.
Chapter 15
What does Nietzsche say Europe owes to the Jews?
The author says Europe owes the Jews many things, good and bad, and above all the grand style in morality: the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands and infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness. This is the most attractive and ensnaring element in the iridescences of life, in whose aftersheen European culture's evening sky now glows. For this, he says, we artists among spectators and philosophers are grateful.
Chapter 15
What does Nietzsche claim about English philosophy and the English?
The author argues the English are not a philosophical race: Bacon attacks the philosophical spirit, while Hobbes, Hume, and Locke abase and depreciate the idea of the philosopher. Kant rose against Hume; Schelling said 'je méprise Locke'; Hegel and Schopenhauer agreed against English mechanical stultification. Lacking philosophy, such an unphilosophical race holds firmly to Christianity, needing its discipline for moralizing and humanizing.
Chapter 15
CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES (part 3)3 cards
How does Nietzsche characterize the 'last great seekers' in art, such as Wagner and Delacroix?
The author argues they were steeped in literary culture, fanatics for expression 'at any cost,' great discoverers of the sublime and the dreadful, and talented virtuosi far beyond their genius. He calls them enemies of logic, hankering after the strange and self-contradictory, Tantaluses of the will incapable of noble tempo in life, and finally shattering at the Christian cross.
Chapter 16
Why does Nietzsche say Paris was indispensable to Wagner's development?
The author argues Wagner's instincts drove him to visit Paris at the most decisive time, and that his whole style of proceedings and self-apostolate could only perfect itself in sight of the French socialistic original. He adds that Wagner acted with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could, since Germans were then nearer to barbarism.
Chapter 16
What does Nietzsche call Wagner's Siegfried, and how does he contrast it with later Wagner?
The author calls Siegfried the most remarkable creation of Wagner, a 'very free man' too free, hard, cheerful, healthy, and anti-Catholic for old civilized nations—perhaps a sin against Romanticism. He argues old Wagner atoned by preaching 'the way to Rome' in Parsifal, which Nietzsche attacks in verse as 'ROME'S FAITH BY INTUITION.'
Chapter 16
CHAPTER IX: WHAT IS NOBLE?4 cards
What does Nietzsche suggest may underlie dogmatic philosophy's absolute edifices?
The author argues that dogmatic philosophy may rest on popular superstitions of immemorial time (such as soul- and ego-superstition), a play upon words, a deception of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, all-too-human facts. He hopes dogmatizing was only a noble puerilism, and compares it to astrology's role in earlier times.
Chapter 17
What does Nietzsche call the worst and most dangerous error, and who caused it?
The author argues the worst, most tiresome, and most dangerous error has been a dogmatist error: Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. He says speaking of Spirit and the Good as Plato did inverted truth and denied the perspective, the fundamental condition of life. He frames the struggle against Plato as the struggle against ecclesiastical Christianity.
Chapter 17
How does Nietzsche characterize Christianity in relation to Platonism?
The author states plainly that Christianity is Platonism for the 'people.' He presents the struggle against Plato as, to speak plainer, the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity. This struggle, he argues, produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, a tensely strained bow now able to aim at the furthest goals.
Chapter 17
What two grand attempts to unbend the bow does Nietzsche name, and who are the 'good Europeans'?
The author names Jesuitism and democratic enlightenment, the latter aided by liberty of the press and newspaper-reading. He says Europeans feel the tension as distress. The 'good Europeans' are those who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor sufficiently Germans—free, very free spirits who still possess all the distress of spirit and tension of the bow, and perhaps the arrow, duty, and goal.
Chapter 17
CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE? (part 1)3 cards
How does Nietzsche distinguish master-morality from slave-morality?
The author argues master-morality originates with rulers who regard the exalted, proud disposition as good, and despise the cowardly, timid, and self-abasing; its antithesis is 'good' versus 'bad' (despicable). Slave-morality originates among the oppressed and values qualities that alleviate suffering—sympathy, patience, humility—making it essentially a morality of utility; its antithesis is 'good' versus 'evil,' where the powerful and dangerous are feared.
Chapter 18
What does Nietzsche claim about the principle of mutual non-injury as a basis for society?
The author argues that refraining mutually from injury, violence, and exploitation may work among individuals of similar force and worth within an organization. But taken as the fundamental principle of society, it reveals itself as a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. He claims life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest, and exploitation—the intrinsic Will to Power.
Chapter 18
What does Nietzsche say about a healthy aristocracy's view of itself?
The author argues a good and healthy aristocracy should not regard itself as a function of kingship or commonwealth, but as the significance and highest justification thereof. It accepts with good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals reduced to slaves and instruments, believing society exists only as a foundation and scaffolding by which a select class may elevate itself to a higher existence.
Chapter 18
CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE? (part 3)2 cards
According to aphorism 287, what establishes the noble man's claim to nobility?
The author argues it is neither his actions, which are always ambiguous and inscrutable, nor his works. Among artists and scholars, a longing for nobleness actually signals its lack. What is decisive is a fundamental certainty the noble soul has about itself, a belief that cannot be sought or found. The noble soul has reverence for itself.
Chapter 20
How does aphorism 285 describe the comprehension of the greatest thoughts and events?
The author argues the greatest thoughts, which are the greatest events, are longest in being comprehended. Contemporaries do not experience such events but live past them. He compares this to starlight: the light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man, and before it arrives man denies that there are stars there. Centuries may be needed for a mind to be understood.
Chapter 20
CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE? (part 4)3 cards
In the poem, what happens to the speaker's old friends when they visit his icy heights?
The speaker says his old friends turn pale with love and fear, but cannot live where he dwells—the farthest realm of ice and scaur, where a hunter must be like a chamois. He tells them to go without wrath, since they could never survive there, and he must seek new friends instead.
Chapter 21
How does the poem describe the bond with former friends in stanza 10?
The speaker compares what once linked them—a shared hope—to a parchment whose fading lines Love once wrote, which the hand is shy to touch, and to crackling leaves, all seared and dry. The tie has withered rather than remained a living connection.
Chapter 21
Who is named as the guest at the 'Feast of Feasts,' and what happens there?
The speaker says they keep the Feast of Feasts, sure of their bourne with self-same aims, and that the Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came. The world then laughs, the grisly veil is torn, and Light and Dark become one on that wedding-morn.
Chapter 21
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #4363 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-23. Cards reviewed 2026-10-23.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
Turn your own notes into cards
Upload a PDF, Word, or text file and get question-and-answer cards for closed-notes practice. Five cards are free, no signup.