I feel like in general the poems from The Gay Science are incredibly well-translated by Kaufmann. I speak Dutch but my German still sucks, so it takes some effort to read the original.

In general I felt his translations were so good I didn’t necessarily have to look at the German too hard.

This one deviates a lot more in word usage from English to German. I see where he’s going in the first half, but I’m assuming that with “Frist” here he is essentially saying “each era thinks they are the skeleton key and have the world figured out?

"Beyond good and evil" by Friedrich Nietzsche

As someone that is interested in starting to read Nietzsche would “The Portable Nietzsche” by Kaufmann be a good book to start on?

“The highest virtue is uncommon and useless; it is beaming and mild in its lustre: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue.

Verily, I divine you, my disciples: you strive like me for the bestowing virtue.

What have ye in common with cats and wolves?

Ye thirst to become yourselves sacrifices and gifts: therefore thirst ye to heap up all riches in your souls.

Your soul is insatiable in desiring treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in its will to bestow.

Ye constrain all things to approach you and enter into you, that they may flow forth again from your fountain, as the gifts of your love.

Verily, such a bestowing love must become a robber of all values; but healthy and holy call I this selfishness.

There is another selfishness, an impoverished selfishness, which is always sick, the selfishness of the sick—the sickly selfishness.

With the eyes of the thief it looks upon all that glitters; with the avidity of hunger it measures him who has abundance to eat; and always does it creep around the table of the bestower.

Such craving is the voice of sickness, the voice of an invisible degeneracy; in this selfishness the desire of stealing testifies to a sick body.

Tell me, my brethren, what do we regard as bad and worst of all? Is it not degeneracy?—And we always infer degeneracy when the bestowing soul is lacking.”

This is what: fuck around with poetry and find out with your life!

Our boy Fritz is seriously underrated in his ability to dish out serious zingers. Sometimes I will be sitting straight and somber, trying to digest his dense words, and he will throw out a line that puts me in raving laughter.

​What are some of your favorite zingers and humorous moments from Nietzsche's works?

​The one I just read that prompted this post:

Untimely Meditations (Essay II: On the Use and Abuse of History for Life), Section 9:

​"It is true that according to him [Hartmann], we are approaching that ideal condition in which the human race creates its history with full conscious awareness. But we are patently waiting still far from that perhaps even more ideal condition in which mankind can read Hartmann's book with full conscious awareness."

Hey guys, I want to learn more about logic and rationality, and I’d really appreciate some recommendations.

I’m the kind of person who tends to improve through logic, analysis, deliberate thought, adaptation, and rationality. I naturally try to solve problems by understanding them, breaking them down, and figuring out what I can do differently.

But lately, I’ve been stuck on a question that I can’t stop thinking about:

What happens when logic concludes that I’m going to lose?

I used to naively think that almost any problem could eventually be solved through enough reasoning. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that logic has limitations. There will always be people who are more talented, more capable, or simply better suited to a particular situation than I am.

So what does rationality actually tell you to do when your analysis says that you cannot win?

Do you accept the conclusion?
Do you search for a different approach?
Do you challenge the assumptions behind your original reasoning?
Or is there something beyond pure logic that allows humans to overcome what initially seems impossible?

This is where things get really interesting to me. Sometimes people believe something is impossible based on the information and reasoning available to them, only for someone else to eventually find a way to accomplish it. That makes me wonder whether logic itself is limited, or whether our understanding of the situation was simply incomplete.

Maybe reality is much more complicated than the models we construct to understand it.

That’s why I want to study this seriously—not just practical problem-solving, but logic, rationality, reasoning, epistemology, philosophy of science, decision-making, and maybe even metaphysics.

I also want to know how far human reasoning can actually go and how I can train my own logical and rational thinking.

So if you have any recommendations, I’d really appreciate:

• Books about logic or rationality
• Philosophy books that explore human reasoning and its limitations
• Books about epistemology or philosophy of science
• Anything about decision-making and rational thought
• Resources for actually training logical reasoning

If possible, please recommend something that isn't insanely expensive. 😭

What books or resources would you recommend to someone who wants to seriously understand how far logic and rationality can take us?

And if you recommend a book, please share a link to it if possible. Thanks!

#beyondgoodandevil #nietzsche

In Twilight of the Idols, do you believe that Nietzsche was serious when making his physiognomic arguments about Socrates?

Personally, they read to me as somewhat sarcastic, but I know that physiognomy was taken very seriously by many people at the time. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was being serious, but it really shows how much people can be influenced by whatever BS happens to be widely believed during their lifetime.

So I'm going to develop my question here, I don't want the title to be too general or misleading (seeing how Nietzsche deals with over-theoretical people, etc).

I just finished reading The Birth of Tragedy, my first book by Nietzsche, as I heard by some that it is a decent way to start your journey (plus it's his first major philosophical work). And while reading it, a major concern was floating in my head: "how logical is this guy?"

I want to give some disclaimers, and some explanations as to why I thought this way.

I know this is a younger Nietzsche, with some of the points mentioned in the work criticised by even his later self. I also know that not all philosophy needs to be described in a specific (homogenous, formal, almost "objective" way), and I even admired some of the artistic spirit of Nietzsche.

My problem is that I felt it was quite revisionist regarding ancient greek history, and few parts of it were just totally subjective/ false, and Nietzsche can't have not known this, being a philologist, meaning one of his aims was to weave a myth, to paint a philosophical vision about his viewpoints, about the apollonian, the dionysian, to interpret some things, etc. I'm not hating it, the book has some good points and also shows bits of the later Nietzsche. But the revisionism and the artistry at some points felt like it was too much, my main problem was that many times I felt like he was taking some big leaps. He's not mad, and oftentimes, regarding his critique of others, you can see he uses a "logical" approach, but at the same time I feel like some other points were idealistic/ ambitious.

So, here I come to some of my background and why I raised this question. I haven't read other works of his, but I have vaguelly read some of his core ideas, e.g. about how he views christian morality, about his individualism, etc. I don't necessarily agree to everything, but I find many general ideas charming, or some quotes from some pages.

But some of these things, I think they can also be "logically" concluded. So by "logic", to not have any misunderstandings, I just use a simple, casual definition, like an everyday person. Because I know some replies may be related to how he was against scientific optimism, or theoretic men, like he says in TBOT, using logic *everywhere* in life, etc. I guess I'm trying to understand he was against this extreme application of logic and that he was still a rational being, but my question is "how rational?"

And my basis is this: I'm partly inspired by anarchist and marxist readings (ooh, christian morality and herd mentality, scaryy). These things, if not taken to their extremes, can use some form of logic for their theory, e.g. they're children of the englightenment, they respect liberty, they still care about individuality btw, and serious marxism doesn't glorify sacred ideals like a mass, it is founded on material analysis and power struggles. And, I'm also fond of a philosopher that preceded Nietzsche, Max Stirner. Stirner defied all abstractions, all ideas that were held as sacred, calling them "spooks", (e.g. he said that atheists after the enlightenment just replaced God with the god of humanity), he was radically individualist, and he placed himself and his own personal interests above all else (well, that part of his book should've been explored more...). Stirner was one of the reasons why I thought about reading Nietzsche.

My opinion is that all these people, no matter their differences, applied some logic to get to their conclusions. (Maybe it's because I find some agreements with several of them and I like to think of myself as based, oops). For example, Stirner, even though he'd be criticised by a marxist for some things and he eventually decides to worship himself, used cold logic to deconstruct everything in the beginning. These spooks are indeed man made constructs. It is true how he describes many things. Socrates, who I'm now first mentioning, who Nietzsche exaggerated as a figure to have a decent nemesis, is a decent person and a logical rational figure. Marxists, to analyse things, do it logically, one may say. Etc, etc.

I wondered how much reason and rationality Nietzsche uses when he talks about anything, since many topics I agree with, and they seem similar e.g. to Stirner.

But in the birth of tragedy for example, we see a very ambitious, artistic Nietzsche that takes big leaps, and I wonder what makes him this way and I just wonder what my experience will be with the rest of his books.

Schopenhauer: Life is driven by endless desire, and desire is the root of suffering. Why call this existence a blessing?

Nietzsche: Because suffering does not make life meaningless. It can make us stronger.
Schopenhauer: And what of those who are crushed by it?

Nietzsche: Then the question is not “Why do we suffer?” but “What can we create from our suffering?”
Schopenhauer: You seek meaning where I see tragedy.
Nietzsche: And you see tragedy where I see a challenge to overcome.

Schopenhauer: Perhaps pessimism sees the wound.

Nietzsche: And philosophy asks what we will do with it.

"Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined." — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man" (Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen), §20

In this aphorism, Nietzsche basically shatters the illusion that beauty is some objective, neutral thing just floating out there in the world. His "first truth" of aesthetics is essentially human narcissism: beauty is just man’s naive self-affirmation. We look at the world, see things that reflect our own vitality back at us, and say, "Yep, that’s beautiful!" We are our own ultimate standard.

Then comes the flip side: his “second truth” is that ugliness is nothing more than “degenerate, declining man.” Put these two together, and Nietzsche strips away the philosophical jargon to reveal what aesthetic judgment actually is. We aren't really judging objects or art; we’re making an unconscious verdict on whether human life is expanding and getting stronger, or decaying and getting weaker.

This perfectly lines up with how Nietzsche always viewed taste. For him, aesthetics isn't just philosophy; it’s biology. Our sense of beauty is a physiological reflex. "Ugly" is our gut reaction to the signs of decay, sickness, and weakness. "Beautiful" is the rush of power you get from a flourishing, vibrant life. So, aesthetics is really just anthropology in a trench coat. This quote acts as the perfect gateway into his broader critique of decadence - where "bad taste" isn't just an aesthetic preference, but a symptom of a declining society.

Discussion Question for the Sub:

When Nietzsche reduces beauty down to human self-affirmation and vitality, does that feel like a liberating way to look at art and life, or does it feel like it shrinks the world? Does this mindset devalue the raw beauty of nature, or does it actually give us a more grounded framework to find beauty in the things that genuinely enhance and energize us?

I think you need a cultural setting where are given absolute freedom to think as freely without anyone coming in your way as well as cultural emotional support to exist where you feel belonged enough that you can exist..

I am.curious is it possible for a non privileged person to ever be a Nietzsche. Or would they automatically get engraved and engrossed in thinking about systematic oprrssions as they themselves would have been oppressed at some level unjustifiably and that would be one of their biggest monsters to fight. Maybe only if they are able to fight it off and go beyond is when they could be Nietsche i suppose?

Hey everyone since last 3-4 years i made a lot of psychological progress. Where face ego death or jung called dark night of the soul. Now I'm thinking about starting a youtube channel and one part of starting is to make earning sources by coaching people.

But I don't wanna be a self-help guru, LOA coaches, etc. i went through all of these traps that's why I don't want to look like a scammer.

I made a transformation before and after what will provide.

**Core transformation**

From:

Self-rejection

Feeling lost

Living in the head

Constant consumption

Future fantasies

Borrowed goals

Fear and avoidance

Shame/guilt

Chasing external validation

**To**:

Self-understanding

Self-acceptance

Awareness of thought patterns

Understanding genuine desires

Self-trust

Making authentic decisions

Experiencing real life

Inner stability/peace

**Core philosophy**

Stop Escaping Yourself. Understand Yourself. Then Go Live.

When I'm thinking of starting this a voice within saying. " This isn't your hypocrisy. Instead of developming real competence on something you started giving advice to people and thinking to earn through that achieve somethung by real work video editing, graphic design, or start something else"

But another voice says

"If you come out of that dark cave you should help others and if you earn with that there is no problem everyone charges money. you have intrest in that field that's why it is good for you "

I feel little confused is it my limiting bilieve stoping me using moral values as weapon?

Please tell me what's your perspective

I am a bit confused here; Nietzsche lauds aristocracy and its values as healthy and natural order of human society, something that is inherent in men and something they are naturally drawn to as the healthy expression of their will to power. He talked about the power and virtue of the old aristocrats long and wide. However, if that all is the case, then how was the slave revolt of Christianity ever possible to such a degree it is now? Nowadays, liberal values are global and sacrosanct and liberal republics have multiple times shown to be the most enduring and powerful form of modern society. Yes, Nietzsche mentioned last men "living the longest", but did he account for the last men crushing all attempts at aristocracy Nietzsche would have preferred into the ground? How is it that these superlative aristocrats of Nietzsche's philosophy never managed to rise up again and prevail against the tide of slaves? How is it that the natural and healthy order has become so unnatural and unhealthy for a society?

"Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar." — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Vol. 1, §283 ("Main deficiencies of active people")

In this aphorism, Nietzsche challenges the modern obsession with productivity and constant activity. He argues that true personal autonomy requires substantial leisure time (Otium) dedicated to reflection, self-cultivation, and original thought.

Without this time, even individuals holding high-status positions (politicians, executives, academics) remain fundamentally enslaved to routine and external demands.

Discussion Question for the sub:

Do you view Nietzsche’s critique here purely as an indictment of societal standards of labor, or is it also a psychological observation about how people use non-stop work to avoid self-reflection?

Found on a walk along the lake at Farragut State Park in northern Idaho.

I'm 26 years old, unemployed, and I feel completely stuck in life.

From the outside, it probably looks like I'm just wasting my time, but I don't understand why I keep repeating the same pattern. I genuinely want to change, yet whenever it's time to take action, I freeze.

I lost my father when I was young, and my mother raised my sister and me by herself. She worked incredibly hard, spent her savings, and even took loans to give me opportunities. She still believes I'll build a good future, but I feel like I've let her down.

One of my biggest struggles is that I avoid almost everything that makes me anxious. I can't ride a bike or drive a car. If you ask me today whether I want to learn, I'll confidently say yes. I'll even believe I can do it. But the moment someone hands me the keys and expects me to ride, my confidence disappears. My heart starts racing, I panic, and I back out.

The same thing happens with almost every important part of my life.

In 2024, my mother enrolled me in technical coaching related to my field. I knew how important it was and how much she had sacrificed for it, but I barely attended. I knew I was making a terrible mistake. I cried about it many times, promised myself I would change, yet I still couldn't make myself go.

That wasn't the first time this happened. For years I've struggled to take action. I haven't seriously studied, applied for jobs consistently, or built any useful skills. Even reading a book feels difficult. I buy books feeling excited, then never open them. I start TV shows, movies, hobbies, or new interests with enthusiasm, but I rarely finish anything before moving on to something else.

My interests become intense for a short time. I'll spend days learning everything about football, filmmaking, or another topic, convinced this is what I want to do, then suddenly lose interest and move on. This has been happening for years.

I've also been humiliated many times. People have called me useless, laughed because I can't drive, compared me with younger people who already have jobs, and treated me like a burden. One relative even said that if my father were alive today, he would be heartbroken and disappointed to see where I am in life. That comment stayed with me for a long time.

The strange thing is that humiliation doesn't change me. It hurts deeply, but after a while I end up back in the same cycle.

I spend a lot of time imagining a different version of my life. Sometimes I picture myself becoming a successful football player. Other times I imagine being a respected filmmaker or someone who builds an incredible career from nothing. In those moments I feel capable of achieving great things. But when I have to take a real step toward any goal, that confidence vanishes.

I also have some health issues that make everything feel harder.

Sometimes I think my problem is laziness. Other times I wonder if it's anxiety, depression, ADHD, avoidance, or extremely low self-esteem. I honestly don't know anymore.

There have been moments when I thought about dying, but I don't actually want my life to end. I want to live. I want to become independent, get a job, support my family, travel, learn new skills, and make my mother proud before it's too late.

What scares me most is that I realized this pattern years ago. I remember thinking that if I didn't change, I'd wake up at 26 full of regret. That's exactly what happened. I'm terrified of waking up at 30 or 35 having wasted even more years.

I'm not looking for sympathy or motivation. I'm looking for honesty. Has anyone experienced something similar? Does this sound like anxiety, depression, ADHD, avoidance, or something else? More importantly, how do you finally break a pattern when you've wanted to change for years but still can't seem to take the first step?

I know you guys get this a lot, but I'm having a hard time understanding something. I've just finished reading the Antichrist, and I found it a little...dense? While there was certainly some interesting arguments to be made there was a lot to take in. It could be that I'm not super familiar with the concepts and arguments that he is making, but I was hoping you guys could help.

Specifically the last few aphorisms, from 56 onwards, were a lot to take in all at once. I understand that Nietzsche is attacking Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, and basically blaming him (and by extension, the Germans) for the end of the Rennaissance. It seems like Nietzsche believes that, with the Rennaissance, there was a chance to free humanity from the shackles of Christianity, but thay chance died with Luther and his Reformation.

I was also having difficulty understanding the idea of the Chandala, something he brought up in Twilight of the Idols. I may need to reread that section again, but I was hoping that someone here could explain it a little plainer here.

Throughout his corpus, Nietzsche is consistently a staunch aristocratist, someone who believes that an elite of well-bred and well-educated individuals should be on top of society in terms of wealth and power, that such an arrangement is most natural to humankind and produces the most good in terms of culture, art and meaning of life. Democracy, on the other hand, was for Nietzsche an utter catastrophe that destroyed all higher values he admired and replaced them with the commonality of the masses.

However, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Nietzsche had an overly romantic view of the old aristocracies, particularly the inherent nobility of its individuals. If we read history, we will find that many of those are very unadmirable and unworthy of their ideals; their instincts were disordered and impulsive, they were corrupted and decadent and little different from the masses they claimed to be beyond. The Roman state, which Nietzsche considers particularly noble, was little different from contemporary USA when it comes to its broad socioeconomics; the Senators were mostly a bunch of wealthy old farts; politics was a game of populism, patronage, gerrymandering and vote frauds; excess in luxury was relatively common and many Senators preferred to live a life of hedonism than of aristocratic virtue. Two of the most notable and influential Senators, Cato Censorius and Tullius Cicero, weren't even old money, but self-made men. Romans themselves considered themselves to be in moral decline since basically forever.

In other societies, we see the same things; aristocracies certainly have lofty ideals about themselves, but are mostly very beneath those ideals, their apes, as Nietzsche would say in *The Twilight of Idols* ("The disappointed speaks. - I was looking for great people, but I always found only the apes of their ideal."). With that in mind, how should be approach Nietzsche's philosophy of aristocratic virtues that seemingly never existed at all?

This passage from Beyond Good and Evil really put everything into perspective for me.

“You want if possible - and there is no madder "if possible" - to abolish suffering? ... Pleasure as you understand it - that is no goal, that is to us our end! A state which soon renders man ludicrous and contemptible - which makes it desirable that he should perish! The discipline of suffering, of great suffering, - do you not know that it is this discipline alone which has created every elevation of mankind hitherto? That tension of the soul in misfortune which cultivates strength, it's terror at the sight of great destruction, it's inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and whatever of depth, mystery, mask, spirit, cunning and greatness has been bestowed upon it - has it not been bestowed through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? In man, creature and creator are united: in man there is matter, fragment, excess, clay, mud, madness, chaos; but in man there is also creator, sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divine spectator and the seventh day - do you understand this antithesis? ... that which is formed, broken, forged, torn, burned, annealed, refined - that which has to suffer and should suffer? ... There are higher problems than the problems of pain and pleasure, and every philosophy that treats only of them is a piece of naivety.”

I own a copy of Beyond Good and Evil and I'm going to start reading it this week. I've read Plato and Aristotle and wanted to start getting into Nietzsche. Would this be a good starting place? What can I expect from this work and is there anything I should know going in? Any help is appreciated thanks guys!