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The Floating Press - Friedrich Nietzsche

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178 pages

English

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German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a bold thinker whose ideas had a major impact on the development of the field. In the book The Dawn of Day, Nietzsche expounds on some of his most radical theories, including what he sees as the harmful nature of Christianity and the ways in which the motivation to achieve a position of power tends to influence human behavior.

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Philosophie et théologie

Philosophy

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 août 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776527205
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE DAWN OF DAY
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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

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The Dawn of Day First published in 1911 ISBN 978-1-77652-720-5 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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The Dawn of Day Introduction Author's Preface Book I Book II Book III Book IV Book V Endnotes
The Dawn of Day
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There are many dawns which have yet to shed their light.—RIG-VEDA.
Introduction
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When Nietzsche called his book The Dawn of Day , he was far from givingit a merely fanciful title to attract the attention of that large sectionof the public which judges books by their titles rather than by theircontents. The Dawn of Day represents, figuratively, the dawn ofNietzsche's own philosophy. Hitherto he had been considerably influencedin his outlook, if not in his actual thoughts, by Schopenhauer, Wagner,and perhaps also Comte. Human, all-too-Human , belongs to a period oftransition. After his rupture with Bayreuth, Nietzsche is, in both partsof that work, trying to stand on his own legs, and to regain his spiritualfreedom; he is feeling his way to his own philosophy. The Dawn of Day ,written in 1881 under the invigorating influence of a Genoese spring, isthe dawn of this new Nietzsche. "With this book I open my campaign againstmorality," he himself said later in his autobiography, the Ecce Homo .
Just as in the case of the books written in his prime— The Joyful Wisdom , Zarathustra , Beyond Good and Evil , and The Genealogy of Morals —wecannot fail to be impressed in this work by Nietzsche's deep psychologicalinsight, the insight that showed him to be a powerful judge of men andthings unequalled in the nineteenth or, perhaps, any other century. Oneexample of this is seen in his searching analysis of the Apostle Paul(Aphorism 68), in which the soul of the "First Christian" is ruthlesslyand realistically laid bare to us. Nietzsche's summing-up of the Founderof Christianity—for of course, as is now generally recognised, it wasPaul, and not Christ, who founded the Christian Church—has not yet calledforth those bitter attacks from theologians that might have been expected,though one reason for this apparent neglect is no doubt that the portraitis so true, and in these circumstances silence is certainly golden on thepart of defenders of the faith, who are otherwise, as a rule, loquaciousenough. Nor has the taunt in Aphorism 84 elicited an answer from thequarter whither it was directed; and the "free" (not to say dishonest)interpretation of the Bible by Christian scholars and theologians, whichis still proceeding merrily, is now being turned to Nietzsche's ownwritings. For the philosopher's works are now being "explained away" byGerman theologians in a most naïve and daring fashion, and with an abilitywhich has no doubt been acquired as the result of centuries of skilfulinterpretation of the Holy Writ.
Nor are professional theologians the only ones who have failed to answerNietzsche; for in other than religious matters the majority of savantshave not succeeded in plumbing his depths. There is, for example, thequestion of race. Ten years ago, twenty years after the publication of The Dawn of Day , Nietzsche's countrymen enthusiastically hailed a bookwhich has recently been translated into English, Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century . In this book the Teutons aresaid to be superior to all the other peoples in the world, the reasongiven being that they have kept their race pure. It is due to this purityof race that they have produced so many great men; for every "good" man inhistory is a Teuton, and every bad man something else. Considerable skillis exhibited by the author in filching from his opponents the Latins theirbest trump cards, and likewise the trump card, Jesus Christ, from theJews; for Jesus Christ, according to Chamberlain's very plausibleargument, was not a Jew but an Aryan, i.e. a member of that great familyof which the Teutons are a branch.
What would Nietzsche have said to this legerdemain? He has constantlypointed out that the Teutons are so far from being a pure race that theyhave, on the contrary, done everything in their power to ruin even theidea of a pure race for ever. For the Teutons, through their Reformationand their Puritan revolt in England, and the philosophies developed by thedemocracies that necessarily followed, were the spiritual forbears of theFrench Revolution and of the Socialistic régime under which we arebeginning to suffer nowadays. Thus this noble race has left nothing undoneto blot out the last remnant of race in Europe, and it even stands in theway of the creation of a new race. And with such a record in history theGermans write books, eulogising themselves as the salt of the earth, thepeople of peoples, the race of races, while in truth they are nothing elsethan nouveaux-riches endeavouring to draw up a decent pedigree forthemselves. We know that honesty is not a prerequisite of such pedigrees,and that patriotism may be considered as a good excuse even for a wrongpedigree; but the race-pandemonium that followed the publication of Mr.Chamberlain's book in Germany was really a very unwise proceeding in viewof the false and misleading document produced. What, it may be askedagain, would Nietzsche have said if he had heard his countrymen screamingodes to their own glory as the "flower of Europe"? He would assuredly havedismissed their exalted pretensions with a good-natured smile; for hisstudy of history had shown him that even slaves must have their saturnalianow and then. But as to his philosophical answer there can be no doubt;for in Aphorism 272 of The Dawn of Day there is a single sentence whichcompletely refutes the view of modern racemongers like Chamberlain and hisfollowers: "It is probable," we read, "that there are no pure races, butonly races which have become purified, and even these are extremely rare."There are even stronger expressions to be met with in "Peoples andCountries" (Aphorism 20; see the Genealogy of Morals , p. 226): "Whatquagmires and mendacity must there be about if it is possible, in themodern European hotch-potch, to raise the question of 'race'!" and again,in Aphorism 21: "Maxim—to associate with no man who takes any part in themendacious race-swindle."
A man like Nietzsche, who makes so little impression upon mankind ingeneral, is certainly not, as some people have thought and openly said, apublic danger, so the guardians of the State need not be uneasy. There islittle danger of Nietzsche's revolutionising either the masses or theclasses; for, as Goethe used to say, "Seulement celui qui ressemble lepeuple, l'émeut." Nietzsche's voice has as yet hardly been lifted in thiscountry; and, until it is fully heard, both masses and classes will calmlyproceed on their way to the extremes of democracy and anarchy, as they nowappear to be doing. Anarchy, though, may be too strong a word; for thereis some doubt whether, throughout Europe and America at all events, thepeople are not now too weak even for anarchy. A revolt is a sign ofstrength in a slave; but our modern slaves have no strength left.
In the meantime, however, it will have become clear that Nietzsche triedto stop this threatening degradation of the human race, that heendeavoured to supplant the morality of altruism—the cause of thisdegradation—by another, a super-Christian morality, and that he hassucceeded in this aim, if not where the masses and the classes areconcerned, at any rate in the case of that small minority of thinkers towhich he really wished to appeal. And this minority is naturally gratefulto the philosopher for having supplied them with a morality which enablesthem to be "good" without being fools—an unpleasant combination which,unfortunately, the Nazarene morality is seldom able to avoid. ThisNazarene morality has doubtless its own merits, and its "good" and "evil"in many cases coincide with ours; but common sense and certainintellectual qualities are not too highly appreciated in the table ofChristian values (see, for instance, 1 Cor. iii. 19), whence it will beobserved that the enlightenment of a Christian is not always quite equalto his otherwise excellent intentions. We Nietzschians, however, must showthat patience to them which they always pretend to show to theiropponents. Nietzsche himself, indeed, recommends this in Aphorism 103 ofthis book, an aphorism which is almost too well known to need repetition;for it likewise disproves the grotesque though widely circulatedsupposition that all kinds of immorality would be indulged in under thesway of the "Immoralistic" philosopher:
"I should not, of course, deny—unless I were a fool—that many actionswhich are called immoral should be avoided and resisted; and in the sameway that many which are called moral should be performed and encouraged;but I hold that in both cases these actions should be performed frommotives other than those which have prevailed up to the present time. Wemust learn anew in order that at last, perhaps very late in the day, wemay be able to do something more: feel anew."
In regard to the translation itself—which owes a good deal to manyexcellent suggestions made by Mr. Thomas Common—it adheres, as a rule,closely to the German text; and in only two or three instances has aslightly freer rendering been adopted in order to make the sense quiteclear. There are one or two cases in which a punning or double meaningcould not be adequately rendered in English: e.g. Aphorism 5