Classic EssaysNietzsche

Nietzsche as Spiritual Warrior — Twilight of the Idols (Part 2 of 4)

Everyone familiar with the world of ideas has heard the term “Nietzschean” invoked as an allusion to the purported beliefs of the great German philosopher, but what does this term really mean and why does it matter? In part two of Nietzsche as Spiritual Warrior, National Vanguard will delve further into Nietzsche’s thoughts on the morality of aesthetics and decadence. The excerpts below are still from Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols.

by Friedrich Nietzsche

NOTHING IS BEAUTIFUL, except man alone: all aesthetics rests upon this naïveté, which is its first truth. Let us immediately add the second: nothing is ugly except the degenerating man — and with this the realm of aesthetic judgment is circumscribed. Physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually deprives him of strength. One can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Wherever man is depressed at all, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride — all fall with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference: the premises for it are piled up in the greatest abundance in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration: whatever reminds us in the least of degeneration causes in us the judgment of “ugly.” Every suggestion of exhaustion, of heaviness, of age, of weariness; every kind of lack of freedom, such as cramps, such as paralysis; and above all, the smell, the color, the form of dissolution, of decomposition — even in the ultimate attenuation into a symbol — all evoke the same reaction, the value judgment, “ugly.” A hatred is aroused — but whom does man hate then? There is no doubt: the decline of his type. Here he hates out of the deepest instinct of the species; in this hatred there is a shudder, caution, depth, farsightedness — it is the deepest hatred there is. It is because of this that art is deep…

The natural value of egoism. — Self-interest is worth as much as the person who has it: it can be worth a great deal, and it can be unworthy and contemptible. Every individual may be scrutinized to see whether he represents the ascending or the descending line of life. Having made that decision, one has a canon for the worth of his self-interest. If he represents the ascending line, then his worth is indeed extraordinary — and for the sake of life as a whole, which takes a step farther through him, the care for his preservation and for the creation of the best conditions for him may even be extreme. The single one, the “individual,” as hitherto understood by the people and the philosophers alike, is an error after all: he is nothing by himself, no atom, no “link in the chain,” nothing merely inherited from former times; he is the whole single line of humanity up to himself. If he represents the descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, and sickness (sicknesses are, in general, the consequences of decay, not its causes), then he has small worth, and the minimum of decency requires that he take away as little as possible from those who have turned out well. He is merely their parasite…

Critique of the morality of decadence. — An “altruistic” morality — a morality in which self-interest wilts away — remains a bad sign under all circumstances. This is true of individuals; it is particularly true of nations. The best is lacking when self-interest begins to be lacking. Instinctively to choose what is harmful for oneself, to feel attracted by “disinterested” motives, that is virtually the formula of decadence. “Not to seek one’s own advantage” — that is merely the moral fig leaf for quite a different, namely, a physiological, state of affairs: “I no longer know how to find my own advantage.” Disintegration of the instincts! Man is finished when he becomes altruistic. Instead of saying naively, “I am no longer worth anything,” the moral lie in the mouth of the decadent says, “Nothing is worth anything, life is not worth anything.” Such a judgment always remains very dangerous, it is contagious: throughout the morbid soil of society it soon proliferates into a tropical vegetation of concepts — now as a religion (Christianity), now as a philosophy (Schopenhauerism). Sometimes the poisonous vegetation which has grown out of such decomposition poisons life itself for millennia with its fumes…

To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has achieved and what one has wished, drawing the sum of one’s life — all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death. One should never forget that Christianity has exploited the weakness of the dying for a rape of the conscience; and the manner of death itself, for value judgments about man and the past.

Here it is important to defy all the cowardices of prejudice and to establish, above all, the real, that is, the physiological, appreciation of so-called natural death — which is in the end also “unnatural,” a kind of suicide. One never perishes through anybody but oneself. But usually it is death under the most contemptible conditions, an unfree death, death not at the right time, a coward’s death. From love of life, one should desire a different death: free, conscious, without accident, without ambush…

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Source: Dissident Millennial

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To12
To12
6 June, 2017 7:09 pm

Yes, nothing is beautiful because the jews who wield total control over the arts replaced culture with pop culture, art with modern art and so on. Instead, they’ve given us stories without plots, music without melodies, and images that don’t inspire. Everything is so trashy, crass and meaningless, but that’s by design. The last thing they want to do is give us art that elevates us, but of course, they’re wholly incapable of doing that because the creative heart of humanity lies in the White race. I was watching a documentary recently on the Vatican II changes within the Catholic church. One thing that struck me was how the Vatican ordered that new churches must take on the “modern” stark look in a so-called attempt to not intimidate the less… Read more »

john smith
john smith
18 October, 2017 11:46 am

is will to power a good book, I here its by fredrich nietzche?

Oleg
Oleg
20 April, 2021 10:13 pm

Gedanken zur Corona-Plandemie Spätestens in der zweiten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts begann das Zeitalter der demokratischen Massenmenschen, der Antiaristokraten, der TV-Pöbel-Menschen, der gehirngewaschenen Angehörigen des großen, internationalen Proletariats. Das alles hat vieles mit der heutigen Situation zu tun, denn: Wie kommt es, dass sich Menschen gegen eine nichtexistierende Pandemie “impfen” lassen, weil sie nach gerade 13 Monaten Gehirnwäsche ihrem Erbgut – ihrem Immunsystem – kein Vertrauen mehr schenken? Muh! Wir Nazis, Faschisten, Rassisten und Aristokraten haben bestimmt alle unsere Fehler, aber ein solcher Irrsinn, ist uns nicht zuzutrauen. Die Halbintelligenten gewinnen aus der gegenwärtigen Situation den falschen Eindruck, dass die jüdische Elite für uns Nazis, Faschisten, Rassisten und Aristokraten arbeitet. Das Gegenteil ist jedoch wahr, nämlich: Wir müssen aufpassen, dass wir nicht vom Pöbel wie das Treibgut eines Flusses mitgerissen… Read more »