Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits Flashcards
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche · Public domain edition · 104 cards · 28 chapters
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human argues that free spirits are made, not born, through a painful liberation from inherited beliefs. This deck covers the preface’s account of that liberation and the book’s early aphorisms on philosophy, reason, and science.
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Chapter 1 · Question
According to the preface, do Nietzsche's 'free spirits' actually exist?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
The author states that such 'free spirits' do not really exist and never did. He says he needed them as gay spirits and comrades to compensate for the lack of friends, mixing some good with his evils of illness, loneliness, and incapacity. He hopes Europe will yet produce them, and does not doubt they are coming, though in his own case they are only fantasms and imaginary shades.
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Section 14 cards
According to the preface, do Nietzsche's 'free spirits' actually exist?
The author states that such 'free spirits' do not really exist and never did. He says he needed them as gay spirits and comrades to compensate for the lack of friends, mixing some good with his evils of illness, loneliness, and incapacity. He hopes Europe will yet produce them, and does not doubt they are coming, though in his own case they are only fantasms and imaginary shades.
Chapter 1
What binds the strongest to their place before a great liberation?
The author argues that for mortals of a choice and lofty nature, the strongest cords are those of duty: the reverence typical of youth, timidity and tenderness before the traditionally honored and worthy, gratitude to the soil we sprang from, the hand that guided us, and the relic before which we were taught to pray. Their sublimest moments bind these souls most strongly.
Chapter 1
How does the great liberation come to such prisoners, and what follows?
The author describes the great liberation as coming suddenly, like an earthquake: the young soul is shaken, torn apart, and cast forth, not comprehending what takes place. An involuntary onward impulse commands it, along with a dangerous curiosity about an undiscovered world. The author calls this first outbreak of will for self-destination a malady that can destroy a man, since much illness surfaces in the freedman's frantic strivings.
Chapter 1
What does the freedman do with things he once revered?
The author says the freedman roves fiercely with unsatisfied longing, and whatever objects he encounters suffer from the perilous expectancy of his pride; he tears to pieces whatever attracts him. With a sardonic laugh he overturns whatever is veiled or protected by reverential awe, wanting to see how things look overturned. He may approve what was in ill repute and stealthily penetrate to forbidden things in curiosity and experiment.
Chapter 1
Section 24 cards
What does Nietzsche say the free spirit must become master over?
The free spirit must become master over itself and its own good qualities, which were formerly its masters but should become tools alongside other tools. It must acquire power over its yes and no, learning to hold and withhold them according to higher aims, and grasp the perspective in every valuation.
Chapter 2
What does the author call a fundamental cure for all pessimism?
The author argues that becoming ill in the manner of free spirits, remaining ill a while, then gradually growing healthier is a fundamental cure for pessimism, which he calls the cankerous vice of idealists and humbugs. He frames it as worldly wisdom to administer health to oneself in small doses over a long time.
Chapter 2
What riddle does the free spirit begin to read, and what does it conclude?
The free spirit reads the riddle of its great liberation, asking why it was so apart and alone, renouncing what it loved. The answer: it had to become master over itself, see the inevitable error in every yes and no, and recognize how strength and reach of perspective grow together. It then generalizes that everyone in whom a problem germinates must go through the same.
Chapter 2
What is the problem of classification that free spirits call their own?
The problem of classification (Rangordnung) concerns rank and station, and how strength, sweep, and reach of perspective wax upward together. The free spirit only fully appreciates in the midday of life what preparations, trials, and contradictory longings were essential before this problem could emerge, having tested and sifted everything as an adventurer of the inner world called man.
Chapter 2
Section 34 cards
What mistake does Nietzsche say all philosophers make about 'man'?
The author argues philosophers take contemporary man as their starting point and treat him as an aeterna veritas, a fixed standard, when their claims only testify to man during a limited period. This lack of historical sense is the traditional defect; man has evolved, and the intellectual faculty itself is an evolution. Hence there are no eternal facts and no absolute truths, making historical philosophising indispensable.
Chapter 3
How does the 'historical philosophy' resolve the puzzle of opposites like reason from non-reason?
The author argues the historical philosophy, inseparable from physical science, finds experimentally that no antithesis exists except in the exaggerations of popular or metaphysical comprehension; an error of reason underlies such contradictions. Strictly speaking there is neither unselfish conduct nor a wholly disinterested point of view—both are sublimations whose basic element seems evaporated but betrays itself to the keenest observation.
Chapter 3
What does Nietzsche propose as the needed task, and what objection does he anticipate?
The author argues what is needed is a chemistry of moral, religious, and aesthetic conceptions and feelings, including emotions felt in society, civilization, and solitude. He asks what if this chemistry showed the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and most despised ingredients—and whether many would then continue such investigations, since mankind loves to put by questions of its origin.
Chapter 3
Why does an advanced civilization value simple scientific truths over magnificent metaphysical errors?
The author argues advanced civilization ranks little, simple truths ascertained by scientific method above pleasing errors of metaphysical and aesthetic epochs. The former seem contemptible, homely, and prosaic at first, while the latter appear beautiful and beatific; yet the hard-won, certain, lasting, and fertile in new knowledge is higher, and holding to it is manly, showing courage, directness, and endurance.
Chapter 3
Section 44 cards
What does Nietzsche claim astrology and moral man both presuppose?
The author argues both share the same conceit: astrology assumes heavenly bodies move in harmony with mortal destiny, while moral man assumes whatever concerns him most must be the heart and soul of things. Both mistake superficialities of things for the core of the cosmos, deceiving themselves because these notions make them happy and wretched.
Chapter 4
According to section 5, what is the source of all metaphysic?
The author claims the dream is the source of all metaphysic. In crude primitive epochs, mankind thought dreams introduced them to a second, substantial world. Without dreams men would never have been incited to analyze the world. The distinction between soul and body, the embodied soul, superstition, and probably belief in god all stem from the primitive conception of dreams.
Chapter 4
Why does Nietzsche say philosophy differs from specialized science?
The author argues specialized, minute departments of science are treated purely objectively, while general universal sciences ask the living question of utility: to what purpose? Because of this reference to utility they are less impersonal. Philosophy, as the apex of the scientific pyramid, conspicuously raises the utility of knowledge, giving every philosophy an air of ascribing the highest utility to itself.
Chapter 4
What does Nietzsche say about the possibility of a metaphysical world?
The author concedes a metaphysical world may exist and its absolute possibility can scarcely be disputed, since we see all things through the human head. But everything that made metaphysical assumptions valuable arose from passion, error, and self-deception, not the best systems of knowledge. Even if established, knowledge of such a world would be of least consequence—less than chemical analysis of water to a storm-tossed mariner.
Chapter 4
Section 54 cards
According to the chapter, what does the dreaming mind do with bodily sensations?
The author argues the dream is a "seeking and presenting of reasons" for excitations of feeling—supposed reasons only. Novel bodily stimuli during sleep (bound feet, coverlets, digestion, posture) provoke the mind to invent a cause, which the first plausible hypothesis then treats as established reality. Thus a sleeper with feet bound by threads may dream of serpents coiled about them.
Chapter 5
Why does the dreamer accept the first hypothesis as true, according to the chapter?
The author argues this is an atavistic relic: for thousands of years, mankind in waking life accepted the first causa that occurred to the mind as the true explanation, and savages still show this tendency per travelers' reports. Dream thought comes easily because we are trained to it through evolution. Dreams thus carry us back to earlier stages of human culture.
Chapter 5
What does the chapter claim about the development of strict logical thought?
The author argues strict, logical thought and the true notion of cause and effect developed very late, since our rational faculties still revert to primitive processes of deduction, and half our lifetime is spent in such conditions. The poet and artist likewise ascribe false causes to emotional states, reminding us of early mankind and aiding its comprehension.
Chapter 5
How does the chapter describe moral and religious feelings?
Strong feelings are associated with allied sentiments and stir memory, reviving similar states; habitual successions of feelings and notions, when they follow with lightning rapidity, are no longer felt as complexities but as unities. So we hear of moral or religious feelings as absolute unities, though the author argues they are really streams with a hundred sources and tributaries.
Chapter 5
Section 64 cards
Why does Nietzsche say deep feelings do not prove metaphysical truth?
The author argues that deep feelings are deep only because complicated groups of thoughts are imperceptibly aroused with them; we call a feeling deep because we deem its accompanying thoughts deep. Remove the blended thought and only strength of feeling remains, which is no voucher for valid knowledge, just as intense faith proves only its own intensity, not the truth of what is believed.
Chapter 6
How does Nietzsche describe the origin of the world of phenomena?
The author argues that we have looked at the world for thousands of years through moral, aesthetic, and religious predispositions, prejudice, passion, and fear, so it became motley, frightful, and soulful. We have been the colorists; the human intellect, on the foundation of human needs and passions, reared the phenomena and injected its erroneous fundamental conceptions into things. Science can gradually light up these stages but cannot eradicate hereditary habits of feeling.
Chapter 6
What double benefit does the young man get from metaphysical explanations?
The author argues that when young, a man prizes metaphysical explanations because they make him see matters of the highest import in things he found disagreeable or contemptible. If dissatisfied with himself, this feeling is soothed when he sees the most hidden world-problem or world-pain in what displeases him. Thus he feels more unresponsible and finds things more interesting. Later he may distrust the method, since physical and historical explanations could achieve the same effects.
Chapter 6
What does Nietzsche call the 'primordial' law of the apprehending subject?
The author cites a distinguished logician's proposition that the universal primordial law of the apprehending subject is the inner necessity of cognizing every object as in its essence a thing unto itself, self-existing and unchanging, in short as a substance. Nietzsche argues even this law is an evolution: lower organisms first see blank sameness, and only later, through desire and aversion, are various substances distinguished. Metaphysics, he says, treats mankind's fundamental errors as fundamental truths.
Chapter 6
Section 74 cards
What delusion underlies the invention of the laws of number, according to the chapter?
The author argues number rests on the primordial delusion that many like things exist, though there is no true duplicate, and that things exist at all, though there is no "thing." The assumption of plurality presupposes something manifesting itself repeatedly, but this is where the delusion prevails: we feign unities and realities that have no existence.
Chapter 7
How does the chapter reconcile false standards of measurement with science's accuracy?
The author argues our notions of space and time are false, leading to logical contradictions when tested. Yet because these standards are at least constant, scientific results possess absolute accuracy and certainty in their relations to one another. One can keep building until a final limit where erroneous fundamental conceptions conflict with established results, as in the atomic theory.
Chapter 7
What does Kant's statement about the intellect mean here, and to what world do number laws apply?
The author endorses Kant's claim that the intellect does not derive its laws from nature but dictates them to her, reading it as full truth regarding the idea of nature we form, which is a synthesis of many intellectual errors. To a world not the outcome of our conception, the laws of number are wholly inapplicable; they are valid only in the world of mankind.
Chapter 7
What disadvantage follows the end of metaphysical thought regarding lasting institutions?
The author argues that when metaphysical modes of thought end, individuals fix too attentively on their own brief lifetime and feel little inducement to found institutions enduring for centuries. They want to gather fruit from trees they plant, so they no longer plant trees requiring centuries of cultivation to shade future generations.
Chapter 7
Section 84 cards
What does Nietzsche say about the possibility of progress versus its necessity?
The author argues progress is possible but not necessary. He calls it hasty and almost unreflective to assume progress must necessarily take place, yet asks how anyone can doubt that progress is possible. Progress along the lines of the old civilization, however, is not even conceivable, since that civilization's greatness lies behind it and can never regain vigor.
Chapter 8
How does Nietzsche criticize Kant's ethics in section 25?
The author argues Kant's ethics required the individual to act as he wishes all men to follow, which he calls simple—as if any individual could determine offhand what conduct conduces to humanity's welfare. He compares it to the theory of free competition, which assumes general harmony must prevail by an inherent law of betterment.
Chapter 8
Why does Nietzsche treat reactionary spirits like Luther and Schopenhauer as evidence about their eras?
The author argues harsh, backward spirits who conjure back a past era show that the new tendencies they oppose are not yet potent enough, or they would better withstand the conjuring. Thus Luther's Reformation shows impulses to freedom of spirit were still immature in his century, and Schopenhauer's metaphysic shows the scientific spirit was not yet powerful enough.
Chapter 8
What does Nietzsche say about philosophy as a substitute for religion?
The author argues the recommendation is just, with qualification: the transition from religion by way of science entails a powerful, perilous leap that should be advised against. He adds that the needs religion satisfies are not immutable—they can be diminished and uprooted—and that art can better serve the transition, since it supports those hypotheses far less than metaphysical philosophy does.
Chapter 8
Section 94 cards
According to section 29, are religions and arts nearer the roots of the world than the stalk?
No. The author argues that religions and arts are a blossoming of the world but not therefore nearer the roots of the world than the stalk. One cannot best learn the nature of the world from them, although nearly everyone thinks so. Error, not pure apprehension, made men deep, sensitive and imaginative enough to bring forth such flowers.
Chapter 9
What erroneous conclusions does section 30 identify about existence, success, and happiness?
Men conclude: a thing exists, therefore it is right; from capacity to live they deduce fitness, and from fitness justification. Also: an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is true. The free spirit, aware of this defect and having suffered its consequences, often swings to equally erroneous opposite conclusions, such as a thing cannot maintain itself, therefore it is good.
Chapter 9
Why does section 31 say the illogical is necessary to mankind?
The author argues the illogical is imbedded in the passions, in language, in art, in religion and above all in everything that imparts value to life, so it cannot be removed without irreparably injuring those beautiful things. Only the utmost simplicity can believe man's known nature could become purely logical; even the most rational man needs his illogical fundamental relation to things.
Chapter 9
What three defects make all judgments of the value of life unjust, per section 32?
First, the subject matter is observed very incompletely; second, the total is summed up inadequately; third, each single item is itself the result of defective perception, and this from absolute necessity. The measuring standard, our being, is not immutable but subject to moods and variations, so we are primordially illogical and unjust beings and can recognize this fact.
Chapter 9
Section 103 cards
What two possible after-effects of knowledge does Nietzsche suppose, and on what do they depend?
The author argues the after-effect of knowledge depends on a man's temperament. One possible result is despair and a philosophy of decay, disintegration, and self-annihilation. The other is a simpler, freer life: old passionate motives weaken gradually under purifying knowledge, and one lives among men and unto oneself without praise, reproach, or competition, content with a free, fearless soaring above men, manners, laws, and traditional estimates.
Chapter 10
What does Nietzsche claim psychological observation offers, and who does he say neglects it?
The author argues psychological observation lightens life's burden, affords presence of mind in difficult situations, and provides entertainment and invigoration on life's thorniest paths. He claims this was known in former centuries but forgotten in his own, especially in Germany and Europe—in novels, philosophy, opinion about public events, and above all general society, which says much about men but nothing about man.
Chapter 10
What counter-proposition does Nietzsche raise against the value of psychological observation?
The author asks whether blind faith in the goodness of human nature, a distaste for disparaging human concerns, and shame at the nakedness of the soul may produce more general happiness than psychological sharp-sightedness. He suggests belief in virtuous men and disinterested benevolence has done more good by making men less distrustful, and cites La Rochefoucauld's maxim that what the world calls virtue is often a phantom created by the passions.
Chapter 10
Section 114 cards
According to section 39, what stages did moral responsibility pass through before being abandoned?
The author traces a sequence: first single actions are called good or bad solely by their consequences for the community; then the origin is forgotten and the quality is placed in the act itself; then in the motives; then in the whole nature of the man. Finally it is discovered that this nature is a necessary consequence of past and present elements, so man is responsible for nothing.
Chapter 11
What does the author conclude about remorse and the stings of conscience?
The author argues that remorse does not prove responsibility. Depression after an act rests on the erroneous assumption that the act need not necessarily have come to pass. Only because man deems himself free, not because he is free, does he experience remorse. This feeling is variable, can be outgrown, and is tied to custom and civilization, perhaps appearing only briefly in world history.
Chapter 11
How does the author criticize Schopenhauer's argument from the consciousness of guilt?
Schopenhauer reasoned backward: since certain actions bring depression, there must be responsibility, and thus a freedom regarding one's nature (esse) rather than one's actions (operari). The author argues this wrongly infers that the fact of depression explains its rational admissibility. Depression after the act need not be rational at all, since it rests on the false assumption that the act need not have happened.
Chapter 11
Why does the author say psychological observation is necessary, and what does science do with ends?
The author argues that moral observation is essential in the present state of philosophy, and that its repulsive dissection can no longer be spared humanity. Science recognizes no considerations of ultimate goals or ends, just as nature does not; yet true science, working with ideas as nature works with matter, will promote human welfare and fitness to ends without having intended it.
Chapter 11
Section 124 cards
According to section 40, why is ethics necessary for humans?
The author argues the beast in us must be wheedled, and ethic is necessary so we are not torn to pieces. Without the errors involved in ethical assumptions, man would have remained an animal. Through these errors he took himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws on himself, feeling hatred for states approximating the animal.
Chapter 12
Why does Nietzsche say unalterable character is not strictly true?
The author argues the favorite proposition that character is unalterable holds only because during a man's brief life, potent new motives usually cannot press hard enough to obliterate lines imprinted by ages. An eighty-thousand-year-old man would have an absolutely alterable character, with maturities of successive individuals developing in him. The shortness of human life causes many erroneous assertions about human qualities.
Chapter 12
What is the two-fold historical origin of the notion good and bad?
The author argues it originates first in the spirit of ruling races and castes: whoever can requite good with good and evil with evil is called good, the powerless bad; good and bad tantamount to noble and servile. Second, in the spirit of the subjugated: every other man is hostile and bad, and goodness is regarded with anxiety as refined badness. Existing morality developed on the foundation laid by ruling races and castes.
Chapter 12
Why is the powerful man grateful, according to section 44?
The author argues the powerful man is grateful because his benefactor, through the benefaction, invaded his domain and established himself on equal footing; the powerful man in turn invades the benefactor's domain and gets satisfaction through gratitude, a mild form of revenge. Failing to obtain that satisfaction would show him powerless. Hence societies of the good place gratitude among the first duties; Swift added man is grateful in the same degree he is revengeful.
Chapter 12
Section 134 cards
What does Nietzsche claim about well-wishing and its role in civilization?
The author argues that small, plentiful things like well-wishing—friendly laughter, hand pressure, courtesy—deserve more scientific attention than great uncommon things. He claims these little tokens of kindly feeling, though containing little that is unegoistic, have done far more for civilization than noisier manifestations like sympathy, benevolence, and sacrifice, and that their combined strength is among the greatest of strengths.
Chapter 13
How does Nietzsche reinterpret the desire to inspire compassion, against La Rochefoucauld?
La Rochefoucauld warns that compassion deprives the heart of strength and should be left to the masses. The author argues the unfortunate's thirst for sympathy is not mere dullness but a thirst for self-enjoyment: by making beholders feel pain, the weak experience a sense of superiority and power. He adds that three-fourths of social questions and replies aim to inflict small pains, and cites Mérimée on doing wrong for its own pleasure.
Chapter 13
How does appearance become reality, according to the chapter?
The author argues that whoever persistently wishes to appear something will eventually find it difficult to be anything else. The actor weeps at his own sorrow as if he were his own audience; the hypocrite who plays one part finally ceases to be a hypocrite, as young priests become genuinely priests. A calling, even an artist's, begins with hypocrisy and imitation, but the mask of friendliness eventually gains power over the wearer, who truly becomes benevolent.
Chapter 13
What distinguishes founders of religions from other great deceivers?
The author argues that all great deceivers share a characteristic: in the very act of deception, amid the agitation of voice and bearing, a belief in themselves comes over them, and this is what acts irresistibly on beholders. Founders of religions differ in that they never leave this state of self-deception, or only rarely have moments of enlightenment overcome by doubt, which they ascribe to an evil adversary. Self-deception must exist for either class to achieve far-reaching results.
Chapter 13
Section 144 cards
Why do people generally tell the truth in ordinary affairs, according to the chapter?
The author argues it is not because a god forbade lying, but because truth is more convenient: falsehood requires invention, make-believe and recollection. Swift notes a liar must insert twenty more lies for every one told. In plain ordinary relations it is expedient to state plainly 'I want this, I have done this,' since freedom and certainty are surer than ruse.
Chapter 14
How does the chapter explain apparently unegoistic acts like a mother's sacrifice?
The author argues such acts are not unegoistic miracles. In each case a person loves one part of himself—a thought, longing, or experience—more than another part, analyzes his being, and sacrifices one part to another. This resembles the obstinate man who would rather be shot than yield. In the ethical domain, the author says, man conducts himself not as individuum but as dividuum.
Chapter 14
What does the chapter say can and cannot be promised?
Actions can be promised, but not feelings, since feelings are involuntary. Whoever promises to love, hate, or be ever true always promises something beyond his power. He can promise conduct that ordinarily accompanies love, hate, or fidelity, though it may spring from quite different motives. So eternal love means: while I love you I show love's deportment, and if love ceases the deportment stays the same from other motives.
Chapter 14
What does the chapter say about meditating revenge versus attaining it?
Meditating revenge and attaining it is like a fever that passes away. But meditating revenge without the strength or courage to attain it is like a chronic malady or poisoning of body and soul. Ethics, which considers only the motive, rates both cases alike; people generally judge the first case worst because of consequences. The author says both views are short-sighted.
Chapter 14
Section 154 cards
Why do coarse men exaggerate the language of their injuries?
The author argues that coarse men who feel injured habitually rate their injury as high as possible and state its occasion in greatly exaggerated language. They do this in order to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thus aroused.
Chapter 15
According to the author, why is hope the greatest of evils?
Pandora opened the box of evils given by the gods, and all the evils flew out except one: hope, which Zeus had her shut inside. The author argues that Zeus gave hope so man would keep living and keep making himself miserable; hope is the greatest evil because it lengthens the ordeal of man.
Chapter 15
How do motives and results affect moral judgment of an act?
The author argues that both observers and the doer judge an act's ethical element by its result, since motives and intentions are seldom apparent and memory becomes clouded by results. Success lends an action the honor of good intention, while failure casts conscience's shadow over estimable deeds. He notes many educated men treat Christianity's triumph over Greek philosophy as proof of superior truth, though the coarser simply overpowered the finer.
Chapter 15
Why does an execution cause us more pain than a murder?
The author argues an execution pains us more because of the executioner's coolness, the painful preparation, and the perception that a man is being used as an instrument to intimidate others. He adds that guilt is not punished even if there be any: the predisposing circumstances lie in teachers, parents, and environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer.
Chapter 15
Section 164 cards
According to aphorism 74, what motives explain extreme, ordinary, and mean actions?
The author proposes a general standard: extreme actions are rarely misjudged if ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear. He presents this as a rule of thumb for interpreting conduct, claiming one will seldom err by applying it.
Chapter 16
Why may two virtuous people wholly misunderstand one another, per aphorism 75?
The author argues virtue is understood through one's own experience of vice. Someone who knew vice through pleasure concludes virtue means self-denial; someone plagued by passions and vices longs for virtue as rest and peace of soul. These opposite starting points make mutual misunderstanding possible between two virtuous people.
Chapter 16
What does aphorism 77 say about honor transferred from persons to things?
Actions prompted by love or self-sacrifice are universally honored wherever they appear. As a result, the value placed on whatever things are loved, or whatever conduces to self-sacrifice, is magnified, even if those things are worth little in themselves. The author's example: a valiant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for.
Chapter 16
How does aphorism 89 define vanity, distinguishing it from other motives?
We value others' good opinion first because it is useful and second to give them pleasure. Only when that opinion matters apart from personal advantage or the wish to please others does the author call it vanity. The vain person seeks to please himself, often by inspiring a false, exalted estimate of himself or arousing envy, sometimes at the cost of his own interests.
Chapter 16
Section 173 cards
What are the three phases of morality hitherto in section 94?
The author describes three stages: first, conduct based on permanently useful rather than immediately expedient ends, making the animal human and utilitarian. Second, conduct regulated by honor, mastering desires for principles and seeking respect. Third, the highest phase: the individual decides for himself and others what is honorable and useful, placing universal enduring utility above personal utility and living as a collective individuality.
Chapter 17
In section 96, what does Nietzsche say 'good' and 'bad' originally mean?
The author argues moral, virtuous, praiseworthy means obeying ancient law and hereditary usage, whether readily or with difficulty. 'Good' means acting in the traditional manner, doing what is customary with scarcely an effort. 'Bad' means not habitual, unusual, opposing tradition however rational. Injury to one's community is the peculiarly immoral act. The fundamental contrast is adherence to tradition versus emancipation from it, not egoism versus altruism.
Chapter 17
What does section 95 argue about altruism and personal advantage?
The author argues altruism has been praised because of its universal utility, but that view may be reversed: the most personal considerations may attain the most general welfare. Contemplating oneself as a complete personality and bearing its welfare in mind produces better results than sympathetic conduct for others. We should labor for fellowmen only insofar as we find our own highest advantage in doing so; crude individualities estimate that advantage most inadequately.
Chapter 17
Section 184 cards
According to section 97, why is customary morality valued and enforced?
The author argues custom is a potent source of joy: it is done more easily and better, and experience suggests a practice that has endured must be good. Custom blends the agreeable and the useful and needs no deliberation. Because it seems the sole condition of well-being, people compel others to adopt it, even when it is burdensome.
Chapter 18
How does section 98 explain the origin of the social instinct?
Through relations with others, man gains new delight in pleasurable emotions his personality affords him, expanding the domain of pleasure. Shared delight heightens pleasure, brings security, dissolves distrust, and inspires sympathy and a sense of homogeneity. Mutual suffering and common danger have the same effect. From such pleasure the earliest alliances for mutual protection, and thus the social instinct, develop.
Chapter 18
Why does section 99 call so-called bad acts guiltless?
All bad acts spring from the impulse to self-preservation, or the desire for pleasure and avoidance of pain, so they are not therefore bad. The author argues 'pain self prepared' exists only in philosophers' brains. We are disturbed by such acts because we falsely suppose the doer had free will and could have chosen otherwise; this belief breeds hate and revenge.
Chapter 18
What does section 101 say about judging earlier ages harshly?
The author argues we must not judge earlier ages by our standard, since the instinct of justice was then less developed. He cites Calvin burning Servetus and the Inquisition as growing from convictions, though the prevailing views were false. He adds that those who command and those who execute are different persons, which makes much cruelty in history less atrocious.
Chapter 18
Section 194 cards
Why does Nietzsche say we call an injuring man immoral but not a storm?
Because we assume the man acts with a voluntary, ruling, free will, while nature acts by necessity. The author argues this distinction is a delusion: intentional injury is not always deemed immoral, and all bad acts reduce to seeking pleasure or avoiding pain—self preservation—so Socrates and Plato are right that man always does what seems good to him.
Chapter 19
What does Nietzsche identify as the real object of badness, and what restrains it?
The author argues badness aims not at inflicting pain but at our own satisfaction—vengeance, nerve excitation, the delight of power shown in teasing. Pleasure itself is neither good nor bad. Only utility, meaning fear of consequences and revenge from the injured party or state, leads us to renounce such pleasure. Sympathy likewise seeks the satisfaction of others, not their pain.
Chapter 19
How does Nietzsche use self defence to justify so-called immoral egoism?
If self defence is a valid justification, then nearly every manifestation of immoral egoism is justified too: pain, robbery, killing, and lying for self preservation. The state itself injures when it hangs criminals. Unintentional injury cannot be immoral. The author argues injury from absolute badness is doubtful, since we never fully know another's pain, and pleasure in the act places it under self preservation.
Chapter 19
Why can punishment and reward not be just, according to the chapter?
Whoever understands absolute irresponsibility sees that the punished does not deserve punishment and the rewarded does not merit reward, since he could not have acted differently. Punishment serves to intimidate others; reward encourages him and others as a motive for later acts. Both rest on utilitarian purposes, and because they work through vanity, those purposes require vanity's continuance.
Chapter 19
Section 204 cards
In the water-fall image, what does the acting individual falsely believe about his will?
The author argues that, like the waterfall's waves, human acts are fully compulsory and mathematically calculable by an all-knowing intelligence. The acting individual is held fast in the illusion of volition; the assumption of free will is itself part of the computable mechanism, not an exception to it.
Chapter 20
According to section 107, what is the difference between good and bad actions?
The author argues there is no difference in kind, only at most in degree: good acts are sublimated evil, and bad acts are degraded, imbruted good. All motives grow from the same roots, and the degree of rational capacity determines the direction the longing for self-gratification takes.
Chapter 20
What does section 107 call the 'bitterest drop' for the man of knowledge?
The absolute irresponsibility of man for his acts and nature. If one has honored responsibility and duty as the patent of nobility of human nature, this insight makes his estimates, preferences, and dislikes worthless and false, and shows his deepest sentiment toward the sufferer and hero sprang from an error.
Chapter 20
How do religion and art deal with evil, per section 108?
They alter the feeling about evil rather than removing its cause — partly by changing judgment about the experience (e.g., 'whom God loves, he chastizes') and partly by awakening joy in pain, as tragedy does. The author argues this narcotizing makes people less likely to look at and eliminate the causes of evil.
Chapter 20
Section 214 cards
What does Nietzsche claim about truth in religion, contra the sensus allegoricus view?
The author argues that no religion has ever contained a truth, whether directly as dogma or indirectly as allegory. Religions arose from dread or necessity through an error of reason. When religions later incorporate philosophical doctrines, this is a theological work of art from the time a religion began doubting itself, not evidence of hidden ancient wisdom.
Chapter 21
How does Nietzsche describe the relationship between religion and true science?
The author argues there exists between religion and true science neither relationship nor friendship, not even enmity: they dwell in different spheres. Any philosophy that lets the religious comet gleam through its last outposts makes everything within it that purports to be science suspicious, since it is probably religion in the guise of science.
Chapter 21
What does Nietzsche say about Schopenhauer's protection of the religion-science harmony view?
The author argues Schopenhauer's high-sounding rhetoric took the erroneous religion-science conception under protection, gaining auditors a generation later. Nietzsche calls Schopenhauer a servile pupil of scientific teachers who protected romanticism and renounced enlightenment, and says had Schopenhauer been born later he could not have spoken of religion's sensus allegoricus.
Chapter 21
What does Nietzsche conclude about the consensus gentium versus the consensus sapientium?
The author argues that even if all peoples agreed on religious things such as a god's existence (which he notes is not actually the case), that agreement would count against the thing agreed upon. The consensus gentium, especially hominum, can amount only to an absurdity; the consensus sapientium holds that the consensus gentium is absurd.
Chapter 21
Section 224 cards
According to the chapter, what fundamental conviction shaped early religious life?
The author argues early religious people held that nature has no laws or "must": seasons, sun, rain, illness, and death all result from the doings of conscious, willing beings. Nature appeared as an immense mass of complex volitions, a domain of freedom and higher power, rather than a calculable, rule-bound order.
Chapter 22
How does the chapter contrast early religious people with modern people regarding nature?
The author argues the contrast is reversed: crude civilizations felt bound by rule and tradition, so uncomprehended nature seemed free, willful, and godlike. Modern people, the richer their inner life, feel nature's uniformity more powerfully, and with Goethe recognize nature as the great means of repose for the soul.
Chapter 22
What does the chapter say religious worship results from?
The author argues religious worship results from the superstitious man's cogitation on imposing a law upon nature. The weaker party seeks to dictate laws to the stronger, first by winning nature's partiality through prayer, humiliation, gifts, and flattery, then through vows and agreements, and most potently through magic and incantation.
Chapter 22
On what basic principle does the chapter say magical influence over spirits works?
The author states the basic principle is that to everything spiritual corresponds something corporeal. Hair, fingernails, food, a picture, or a name gives a handle by which the spirit can be bound, injured, or destroyed. Since nature spirits also have a corporeal element, magic can act on them the same way humans influence humans.
Chapter 22
Section 231 cards
According to section 23, what is the aim of religious worship toward nature?
The author argues that religious worship aims to influence nature to human advantage, instilling into her a subjection to law she originally lacks. Worship rests on the idea of magic between man and man, with the magician older than the priest, and also on higher ideas: benevolence, gratitude, prayer, truces between enemies, loans on security, and arrangements protecting property.
Chapter 23
Section 244 cards
According to section 120, why is an agreeable opinion accepted as true?
The author argues that agreeable opinions are accepted as true because of the testimony of pleasure: a belief that did not make one blessed would not be believed. He notes religions take pride in this evidence of strength, though he says they should be ashamed of it, since it shows how little such a belief is worth.
Chapter 24
What does section 122 say about the power of blind pupils versus masters?
The author argues that a pupil or apostle blind to the weaknesses of a dogma or religion, dazzled by reverence for the master, generally has more power than the master. Without blind pupils, a man's influence has never become great. To give victory to knowledge often means allying it with stupidity so that the latter's brute force forces triumph.
Chapter 24
How does section 124 explain the origin of sin and its effect?
The author argues sin came into the world through errors of reason, by which men in their dealings with one another, and even individually, saw themselves as much blacker and wickeder than was really the case. Understanding this lightens one's whole feeling, making man and world appear harmless, like a child in paradise after a heavy dream.
Chapter 24
What does section 131 say about presentiments and religious feelings in free spirits?
The author argues that free spirits may reject dogmas yet still yield to the magic of religious feelings, as in music, and that scientific philosophy must guard against delusions smuggled in through this need. He holds presentiments are no evidence: hunger is no proof food is at hand, and presentiment only means a thing is desired or feared, not known.
Chapter 24
Section 254 cards
How does Nietzsche explain the Christian 'need of salvation' psychologically?
The author argues it arises from delusion, not sin: a man compares himself to a fabled God capable of purely unegoistic conduct, feels self-contempt at the contrast, and fears divine punishment. Nietzsche claims no one acts without some personal motive, so the standard is fabulous, and the resulting depression is produced by a false, unscientific view of his own acts and feelings.
Chapter 25
What does Nietzsche say about the possibility of purely unegoistic conduct?
The author argues that a being capable of absolutely unegoistic conduct is as fabulous as the phoenix and not even thinkable, since the notion vanishes on close examination. He cites Lichtenberg and La Rochefoucauld to support that people love only the feelings others inspire, and notes that love is prized for its utility, not its nature.
Chapter 25
What happens to the feeling of sin once belief in God collapses, according to the chapter?
Nietzsche says the feeling of 'sin' as violation of divine rescript and stain on a godlike creation collapses with the idea of God. What remains is discouragement allied with fear of worldly punishment or fellow men's contempt. That keenest thorn dulls once one sees acts contravene only human tradition and laws, not eternal salvation; absorbing the necessity of all acts removes conscience pangs.
Chapter 25
How does Nietzsche reinterpret the Christian's experience of grace and consolation?
The author argues the Christian misreads his own recovery: joy in his being and the decline of his excitation over time restore his self-love, which he mistakes for unmerited divine grace. As he formerly falsely interpreted his conduct, now he falsely interprets his experiences, calling self-love divine love. What he calls grace and the preliminary of salvation is really self-grace and self-salvation.
Chapter 25
Section 263 cards
What does Nietzsche say is the essential preliminary to being a Christian?
The author argues that a certain false psychology and a kind of imaginativeness in interpreting motives and experiences is the essential preliminary to being a Christian and to experiencing the need of salvation. Once one gains insight into this wandering of reason and imagination, one ceases to be a Christian.
Chapter 26
Why does Nietzsche say ascetic self-abnegation is not truly moral?
The author argues such acts are not moral because they are not done with strict regard for others. Instead, others merely afford the high-strung temperament an opportunity to lighten itself through abnegation. What is really involved is exchanging one idea for another while temperament stays at a like altitude; pride and the admiration of onlookers sustain the person once passion weakens.
Chapter 26
How does the ascetic make life easier through subjection, according to Nietzsche?
The author argues the ascetic seeks to make life easier by absolute subjection to another will or an all-inclusive rule and ritual, like the Brahmin guided by holy injunctions. This subjection is a potent means of gaining dominion over oneself: one is occupied, time does not hang heavy, personal will and passion are not incited, and there is no responsibility or sting of regret.
Chapter 26
Section 272 cards
What does Nietzsche claim is the real purpose of Christianity's excessive moral demands?
The author argues the demands are excessive so that it is impossible for man to satisfy them. The object is not that he become moral but that he feel as sinful as possible. This feeling of imaginary sinfulness produces the so-called need of salvation, which results not from real but from imaginary sinfulness. Religions that make man bad by nature render nature suspicious, so he learns to feel himself evil.
Chapter 27
How does Empedocles' view of procreation differ from Christian pessimism?
In pessimistic religions the act of procreation is looked upon as evil in itself, a view the chapter says is far from general human opinion and not even shared by all pessimists. Empedocles knows nothing shameful, devilish, or sinful in it; he sees in the great field of bliss of unholiness a healthful and hopeful phenomenon, Aphrodite, evidence that strife does not always rage and a gentle demon will sometime wield the sceptre.
Chapter 27
Section 284 cards
According to the chapter, what gives the saint his historical importance?
The author argues it is not what the saint is but what he was in the eyes of the non-sanctified. A delusion about the saint—his soul states falsely viewed and his personality sundered from humanity as something incomparable and supernatural—let him attain the extraordinary that swayed the imaginations of whole nations and ages.
Chapter 28
How did the saint regard his own dispositions, passions, and actions?
The chapter states the saint did not know himself: he viewed his dispositions, passions, and actions through an artificial and exaggerated system of interpretation, compared to the pneumatic interpretation of the bible. His spiritual poverty, defective knowledge, ruined health, and overwrought nerves remained hidden from him as from his beholders.
Chapter 28
How does the chapter describe the founder of Christianity?
He is cited as an exception distinguished by delusions that shed a glow over his being: he took himself for the only begotten son of God and hence felt himself sinless. The chapter notes antiquity swarmed with sons of god and says this should not be too harshly judged, since through imagination he reached complete sinlessness and irresponsibility, now attainable by every individual through science.
Chapter 28
How did Buddhists and Christians differ on knowledge and science as essential to sanctity?
The chapter says Buddhists insisted upon knowledge and science, as far as they existed, and superiority to the rest of mankind by logical discipline and training of the intellectual powers as essential to sanctity. The christian world, by contrast, denounced these same things as indications of sinfulness. Indian saints are placed between christian saints and Greek philosophers, not a pure type.
Chapter 28
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #38145 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-28. Cards reviewed 2026-10-28.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
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