“I take a single case. Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with a melancholy fervor. Why? Because he sees in it a bridge on which one will go farther, or develop a thirst to go farther. Beauty is for him a momentary redemption from the ‘will’ — a lure to eternal redemption. Particularly, he praises beauty as the redeemer from ‘the focal point of the will,’ from sexuality — in beauty he sees the negation of the drive toward procreation. Queer saint! Somebody seems to be contradicting you; I fear it is nature. To what end is there any such thing as beauty in tone, color, fragrance, or rhythmic movement in nature? What is it that beauty evokes? Fortunately, a philosopher contradicts him too. No lesser authority than that of the divine Plato (so Schopenhauer himself calls him) maintains a different proposition: that all beauty incites procreation, that just this is the proprium of its effect, from the most sensual up to the most spiritual.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 22)

depression, neo-liberalism
(Byung-Chul Han quotes)

“L'art pour l'art. — The fight against purpose in art is always a fight against the moralizing tendency in art, against its subordination to morality. L'art pour l'art means, ‘The devil take morality!’ But even this hostility still betrays the overpowering force of the prejudice. When the purpose of moral preaching and of improving man has been excluded from art, it still does not follow by any means that art is altogether purposeless, aimless, senseless — in short, l'art pour l'art, a worm chewing its own tail. ‘Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!’ — that is the talk of mere passion. A psychologist, on the other hand, asks: what does all art do? does it not praise? glorify? choose? prefer? With all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations. Is this merely a ‘moreover’? an accident? something in which the artist's instinct had no share? Or is it not the very presupposition of the artist's ability? Does his basic instinct aim at art, or rather at the sense of art, at life? at a desirability of life? Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as l'art pour l'art?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 24)

“One question remains: art also makes apparent much that is ugly, hard, and questionable in life; does it not thereby spoil life for us? And indeed there have been philosophers who attributed this sense to it: ‘liberation from the will’ was what Schopenhauer taught as the overall end of art; and with admiration he found the great utility of tragedy in its ‘evoking resignation.’ But this, as I have already suggested, is the pessimist's perspective and ‘evil eye.’ We must appeal to the artists themselves. What does the tragic artist communicate of himself? Is it not precisely the state without fear in the face of the fearful and questionable that he is showing? This state itself is a great desideratum, whoever knows it, honors it with the greatest honors. He communicates it — must communicate it, provided he is an artist, a genius of communication. Courage and freedom of feeling before a powerful enemy, before a sublime calamity, before a problem that arouses dread — this triumphant state is what the tragic artist chooses, what he glorifies. Before tragedy, what is warlike in our soul celebrates its Saturnalia; whoever is used to suffering, whoever seeks out suffering, the heroic man praises his own being through tragedy — to him alone the tragedian presents this drink of sweetest cruelty.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 24)

humor, politics

“We no longer have sufficiently high esteem for ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not at all garrulous. They could not communicate themselves even if they tried: they lack the right words. We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. In all talk there is a grain of contempt. Language, it seems, was invented only for what is average, medium, communicable. By speaking the speaker immediately vulgarizes himself. — Out of a morality for deaf-mutes and other philosophers.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 26)

yes, it is I who has expropriated it from my dictator girl 🥰
but you have already seized mine from me

You are an Electron,
and I, your Positron.
We are of the same energy...
our union, a beautiful synergy,
though of the opposite charge…
when with each other we merge,
it would be a spectacular surge
of energy, from which would emerge
our 2 γ-photons of very high energy,
a beautiful testament to our lovergy.

If black holes we were,
which also we both are,
we could do the same,
once our love we proclaim, –
which would last an eternity –
through our enormous gravity,
coupled with our insanity
and indeed our inner vitality…
irresistible as we are,
though we now be far,
unity yet we are,
even from afar.

A pair made in cosmos,
and powered by eros, –
Kitty and her Dionysos, –
driven by our deep chaos

like two crazy wild cats,
you and me, my Schatz,
shall we destroy the world, –
since it's so crooked & old –
and create it anew,
so we can continue
our quest for something new,
my Liebling... just me and you

and when it all falls apart,
that would stir our heart,
as we watch it together,
while loving each other,
with your hand in mine,
our bodies all entwin'd.

us

“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.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 35)

the nature of oppression

pretty good compliment for women 🥰👍🏼

“Whether we have become more moral. — Against my conception of ‘beyond good and evil’ — as was to be expected — the whole ferocity of moral hebetation, mistaken for morality itself in Germany, as is well known, has gone into action: I could tell fine stories about that. Above all I was asked to consider the ‘undeniable superiority’ of our age in moral judgment, the real progress we have made here: compared with us, a Cesare Borgia is by no means to be represented after any manner as a ‘higher man,’ a kind of overman. A Swiss editor of the ‘Bund’ went so far that he ‘understood’ the meaning of my work — not without expressing his respect for my courage and daring — to be a demand for the abolition of all decent feelings. Thank you! In reply, I take the liberty of raising the question whether we have really become more moral. That all the world believes this to be the case merely constitutes an objection.

We modern people, very tender, very easily hurt, and offering as well as receiving consideration a hundredfold, really have the conceit that this tender humanity which we represent, this attained unanimity in sympathetic regard, in readiness to help, in mutual trust, represents positive progress; and that in this respect we are far above the men of the Renaissance. But that is how every age thinks, how it must think. What is certain is that we may not place ourselves in renaissance conditions, not even by an act of thought: our nerves would not endure that reality, not to speak of our muscles. But such incapacity does not prove progress, only another, later constitution, one which is weaker, frailer, more easily hurt, and which necessarily generates a morality rich in consideration. Were we to think away our frailty and lateness, our physiological senescence, then our morality of ’humanization’ would immediately lose its value too (in itself, no morality has any value) — it would even arouse disdain. On the other hand, let us not doubt that we moderns, with our thickly padded humanity, which at all costs wants to avoid bumping into a stone, would have provided Cesare Borgia's contemporaries with a comedy at which they could have laughed themselves to death. Indeed, we are unwittingly funny beyond all measure with our modern ‘virtues.’”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 37)

“The decrease in instincts which are hostile and arouse mistrust — and that is all our ‘progress’ amounts to — represents but one of the consequences attending the general decrease in vitality: it requires a hundred times more trouble and caution to make so conditional and late an existence prevail. Hence each helps the other; hence everyone is to a certain extent sick, and everyone is a nurse for the sick. And that is called ‘virtue.’ Among men who still knew life differently — fuller, more squandering, more overflowing — it would have been called by another name: ‘cowardice’ perhaps, ‘wretchedness,’ ‘old ladies' morality.’

Our softening of manners — that is my proposition; that is, if you will, my innovation — is a consequence of decline; the hardness and terribleness of morals, conversely, can be a consequence of an excess of life. For in that case much may also be dared, much challenged, and much squandered. What was once the spice of life would be poison for us.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 37)

“To be indifferent — that too is a form of strength — for that we are likewise too old, too late. Our morality of sympathy, against which I was the first to issue a warning — that which one might call l'impressionisme morale — is just another expression of that physiological overexcitability which is characteristic of everything decadent. That movement which tried to introduce itself scientifically with Schopenhauer's morality of pity — a very unfortunate attempt! — is the real movement of decadence in morality; as such, it is profoundly related to Christian morality. Strong ages, noble cultures, all consider pity, ‘neighbor-love,’ and the lack of self and self-assurance as something contemptible. Ages must be measured by their positive strength — and then that lavishly squandering and fatal age of the Renaissance appears as the last great age; and we moderns, with our anxious self-solicitude and neighbor-love, with our virtues of work, modesty, legality, and scientism — accumulating, economic, machinelike — appear as a weak age. Our virtues are conditional on, are provoked by, our weaknesses. ‘Equality’ as a certain factual increase in similarity, which merely finds expression in the theory of ‘equal rights,’ is an essential feature of decline. The cleavage between man and man, status and status, the plurality of types, the will to be oneself, to stand out — what I call the pathos of distance, that is characteristic of every strong age. The strength to withstand tension, the width of the tensions between extremes, becomes ever smaller today; finally, the extremes themselves become blurred to the point of similarity.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 37)

“All our political theories and constitutions [Staats-Verfassungen] — and the ‘German Reich’ is by no means an exception — are consequences, necessary consequences, of decline; the unconscious effect of decadence has assumed mastery even over the ideals of some of the sciences. My objection against the whole of sociology in England and France remains that it knows from experience only the forms of social decay, and with perfect innocence accepts its own instincts of decay as the norm of sociological value-judgments. The declining life, the decrease in the power to organize — that is, to separate, tear open clefts, subordinate and superordinate — all this has been formulated as the ideal in contemporary sociology. Our socialists are decadents, but Mr. Herbert Spencer is a decadent too: he considers the triumph of altruism desirable!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols (§9. 37)

mental health, liberal therapy culture