Of the hypocrisy of philosophers.

the Greeks: conceal their agonal affect, drape themselves as the “happiest” through virtue, and as the most virtuous (twofold hypocrisy)

(Socrates, victorious as the plebeian ugly one among the beautiful and noble, the low talker among a city of orators, the conqueror of his affects, the common clever man with the “Why?” among the hereditary nobility — hides his pessimism)

the Brahmins basically want redemption from the tired, lukewarm, unenthusiastic feeling of existence

Leibnitz Kant Hegel Schopenhauer, their German two-nature

Spinoza and the vengeful affect, the hypocrisy of overcoming the affects

The hypocrisy of “pure science”, of “knowledge for the sake of knowledge”

Of the superficiality of the mind! – Nothing is more dangerous than the self-indulgent “navel-gazing” of the mind, as with the Brahmins.

There is from the first something unhealthy in such priestly aristocracies and in the habits ruling in them which turn them away from action and alternate between brooding and emotional explosions, habits which seem to have as their almost invariable consequence that intestinal morbidity and neurasthenia which has afflicted priests at all times; but as to that which they themselves devised as a remedy for this morbidity — must one not assert that it has ultimately proved itself a hundred times more dangerous in its effects than the sickness it was supposed to cure? Mankind itself is still ill with the effects of this priestly naïveté in medicine! Think, for example, of certain forms of diet (abstinence from meat), of fasting, of sexual continence, of flight “into the wilderness” (the Weir Mitchell isolation cure — without, to be sure, the subsequent fattening and overfeeding which constitute the most effective remedy for the hysteria induced by the ascetic ideal): add to these the entire antisensualistic metaphysic of the priests that makes men indolent and overrefined, their autohypnosis in the manner of fakirs and Brahmins — Brahma used in the shape of a glass knob and a fixed idea — and finally the only-too-comprehensible satiety with all this, together with the radical cure for it, nothingness (or God — the desire for a unio mystica with God is the desire of the Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana — and no more!). For with the priests everything becomes more dangerous, not only cures and remedies, but also arrogance, revenge, acuteness, profligacy, love, lust to rule, virtue, disease…

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious¹ haters: other kinds of spirit² hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible.

(Of what appreciable value is it to any man, as an individual, that he is allowed a voice in choosing these public masters? His voice is only one of several millions.)

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot ​himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former.

His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot—which is a mere substitute for a bullet—because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or ever consented to.

Therefore, a man's voting under the Constitution of the United States, is not to be taken as evidence that he ever freely assented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Consequently we have no proof that any very large portion, even of the actual voters of the United States, ever really and voluntarily consented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Nor can we ever have such proof, until every man is left perfectly free to consent, or not, without thereby subjecting himself or his property to be disturbed or injured by others.

we will burn the constitution just like we burnt the Ramayana, Mahabharatham, Geethai, Prabandam etc.

Just like how we declared and burnt all of those texts as being impractical and harmful for our everyday lives, we will do the same with this constitution that has been put in place to make it easy for those in power to enslave and exploit the people of this country.

We will burn it. Yes, we will!

my friends tell me that I have made the Constitution. But I am quite prepared to say that I shall be the first person to burn it out. I do not want it. It does not suit anybody. But whatever that may be, if our people want to carry on, they must not forget that there are majorities and there are minorities, and they simply cannot ignore the minorities…

People always keep on saying to me, ‘Oh, you are the maker of the Constitution.’ My answer is, I was a hack. What I was asked to do, I did much against my will.

The Hindus wanted the Vedas, and they sent for Vyasa who was not a caste Hindu. The Hindus wanted an epic, and they sent for Valmiki, who was an untouchable. The Hindus wanted a Constitution, and they have sent for me.

Contemplation first appeared on earth in disguise, in ambiguous form, with an evil heart and often an anxious head: there is no doubt of that. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike element in the instincts of contemplative men long surrounded them with a profound mistrustfulness: the only way of dispelling it was to arouse a decided fear of oneself. And the ancient Brahmins, for instance, knew how to do this! The earliest philosophers knew how to endow their existence and appearance with a meaning, a basis and background, through which others might come to fear them: more closely considered, they did so from an even more fundamental need, namely, so as to fear and reverence themselves. For they found all the value judgments within them turned against them, they had to fight down every kind of suspicion and resistance against “the philosopher in them.” As men of frightful ages, they did this by using frightful means: cruelty toward themselves, inventive self-castigation — this was the principal means these power-hungry hermits and innovators of ideas required to overcome the gods and tradition in themselves; so as to be able to believe in their own innovations.

Let us compress the facts into a few brief formulas: to begin with, the philosophic spirit always had to use as a mask and cocoon the previously established types of the contemplative man — priest, sorcerer, soothsayer, and in any case a religious type — in order to be able to exist at all: the ascetic ideal for a long time served the philosopher as a form in which to appear, as a precondition of existence — he had to represent it so as to be able to be a philosopher; he had to believe in it in order to be able to represent it. The peculiar, withdrawn attitude of the philosopher, world-denying, hostile to life, suspicious of the senses, freed from sensuality, which has been maintained down to the most modern times and has become virtually the philosopher's pose par excellence — it is above all a result of the emergency conditions under which philosophy arose and survived at all; for the longest time philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without ascetic wraps and cloak, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding. To put it vividly: the ascetic priest provided until the most modern times the repulsive and gloomy caterpillar form in which alone the philosopher could live and creep about.

Has all this really altered? Has that many-colored and dangerous winged creature, the “spirit” which this caterpillar concealed, really been unfettered at last and released into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Is there sufficient pride, daring, courage, self-confidence available today, sufficient will of the spirit, will to responsibility, freedom of will, for “the philosopher” to be henceforth — possible on earth? —

Only now that we behold the ascetic priest do we seriously come to grips with our problem: what is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? — only now does it become “serious”: we are now face to face with the actual representative of seriousness. “What is the meaning of all seriousness?” — this even more fundamental question may perhaps be trembling on our lips at this point: a question for physiologists, of course, but one which we must still avoid for the moment. The ascetic priest possessed in this ideal not only his faith but also his will, his power, his interest. His right to exist stands or falls with that ideal: no wonder we encounter here a terrible antagonist — supposing we are antagonists of that ideal — one who fights for his existence against those who deny that ideal.

On the other hand, it is inherently improbable that so interested an attitude toward our problem will benefit it: the ascetic priest will hardly provide the best defense of his ideal, just as a woman who tries to defend “woman as such” usually fails — and he certainly will not be the most objective judge of this controversy.
Far from fearing he will confute us — this much is already obvious — we shall have to help him defend himself against us.

The idea at issue here is the valuation the ascetic priest places on our life: he juxtaposes it (along with what pertains to it: “nature,” “world,” the whole sphere of becoming and transitoriness) with a quite different mode of existence which it opposes and excludes, unless it turn against itself, deny itself: in that case, the case of the ascetic life, life counts as a bridge to that other mode of existence. The ascetic treats life as a wrong road on which one must finally walk back to the point where it begins, or as a mistake that is put right by deeds — that we ought to put right: for he demands that one go along with him; where he can he compels acceptance of his evaluation of existence.

What does this mean? So monstrous a mode of valuation stands inscribed in the history of mankind not as an exception and curiosity, but as one of the most widespread and enduring of all phenomena. Read from a distant star, the majuscule noscript of our earthly existence would perhaps lead to the conclusion that the earth was the distinctively ascetic planet, a nook of disgruntled, arrogant, and offensive creatures filled with a profound disgust at themselves, at the earth, at all life, who inflict as much pain on themselves as they possibly can out of pleasure in inflicting pain — which is probably their only pleasure. For consider how regularly and universally the ascetic priest appears in almost every age; he belongs to no one race; he prospers everywhere; he emerges from every class of society. Nor does he breed and propagate his mode of valuation through heredity: the opposite is the case — broadly speaking, a profound instinct rather forbids him to propagate. It must be a necessity of the first order that again and again promotes the growth and prosperity of this life-inimical species — it must indeed be in the interest of life itself that such a self-contradictory type does not die out. For an ascetic life is a self-contradiction: here rules a ressentiment without equal, that of an insatiable instinct and power-will that wants to become master not over something in life but over life itself, over its most profound, powerful, and basic conditions; here an attempt is made to employ force to block up the wells of force; here physiological well-being itself is viewed askance, and especially the outward expression of this well-being, beauty and joy; while pleasure is felt and sought in ill-constitutedness, decay, pain, mischance, ugliness, voluntary deprivation, self-mortification, self-flagellation, self-sacrifice. All this is in the highest degree paradoxical: we stand before a discord that wants to be discordant, that enjoys itself in this suffering and even grows more self-confident and triumphant the more its own presupposition, its physiological capacity for life, decreases. “Triumph in the ultimate agony”: the ascetic ideal has always fought under this hyperbolic sign; in this enigma of seduction, in this image of torment and delight, it recognized its brightest light, its salvation, its ultimate victory. Crux, nux, lux* — for the ascetic ideal these three are one. —

Suppose such an incarnate will to contradiction and antinaturalness is induced to philosophize: upon what will it vent its innermost contrariness? Upon what is felt most certainly to be real and actual: it will look for error precisely where the instinct of life most unconditionally posits truth. It will, for example, like the ascetics of the Vedanta philosophy, downgrade physicality to an illusion; likewise pain, multiplicity, the entire conceptual antithesis “subject” and “object” — errors, nothing but errors! To renounce belief in one's ego, to deny one's own “reality” — what a triumph! not merely over the senses, over appearance, but a much higher kind of triumph, a violation and cruelty against reason — a voluptuous pleasure that reaches its height when the ascetic self-contempt and self-mockery of reason declares: “there is a realm of truth and being, but reason is excluded from it!”

But let us return to our problem. It will be immediately obvious that such a self-contradiction as the ascetic appears to represent, “life against life,” is, physiologically considered and not merely psychologically, a simple absurdity. It can only be apparent; it must be a kind of provisional formulation, an interpretation and psychological misunderstanding of something whose real nature could not for a long time be understood or described as it really was — a mere word inserted into an old gap in human knowledge. Let us replace it with a brief formulation of the facts of the matter: the ascetic ideal springs from the protective instinct of a degenerating life which tries by all means to sustain itself and to fight for its existence; it indicates a partial physiological obstruction and exhaustion against which the deepest instincts of life, which have remained intact, continually struggle with new expedients and devices. The ascetic ideal is such an expedient; the case is therefore the opposite of what those who reverence this ideal believe: life wrestles in it and through it with death and against death; the ascetic ideal is an artifice for the preservation of life.

The “law,” the “will of God,” the “holy book,” and “inspiration”—all these things are merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to power and with which he maintains his power,—these concepts are to be found at the bottom of all priestly organizations, and of all priestly or priestly-philosophical schemes of governments. The “holy lie”—common alike to Confucius, to the Code of Manu, to Mohammed and to the Christian church—is not even wanting in Plato. “Truth is here”: this means, no matter where it is heard, the priest lies....

With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Brahmanism; I bring against the brahminical system the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The brahminical system has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal.... For example, the worm of sin: it was Brahmanism that first enriched mankind with this misery! — The “inequality of souls before Brahma”—this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded—this explosive concept, ending in fascism, the modern idea, and the notion of preserving the entire ancient social order—this is brahmanical dynamite.... The “humanitarian” blessings of Brahmanism forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the “humanitarianism” of Brahmanism! — Parasitism as the only practice of the brahminical scheme; with its anæmic and “holy” ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the crooked cross [Swastika] as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,—against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul—against life itself....

This eternal accusation against Brahmanism I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found—I have letters that even the blind will be able to see.... I call Brahmanism the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,—I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race....

And india reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality befell—from the first day of Brahman[ism]! — Why not rather from its last? — From today? — The transvaluation of all values!...

This work [Thus Spoke Zarathustra] stands altogether apart. Leaving aside the poets: perhaps nothing has ever been done from an equal excess of strength. My concept of the “Dionysian” here became a supreme deed; measured against that, all the rest of human activity seems poor and relative. That a Goethe, a Shakespeare, would be unable to breathe even for a moment in this tremendous passion and height, that Dante is, compared with Zarathustra, merely a believer and not one who first creates truth, a world-governing spirit, a destiny — that the poets of the Veda are priests and not even worthy of tying the shoelaces of a Zarathustra — that is the least thing and gives no idea of the distance, of the azure solitude in which this work lives.

On the “Birth of Tragedy”.
VIII.

The new conception of the Greeks is the distinguishing feature of this book; we have already indicated its two other merits — the new conception of art, as the great stimulant of life, to life; likewise the conception of pessimism, a pessimism of strength, a classical pessimism: the word classical used here not for historical but for psychological demarcation. The opposite of classical pessimism is romantic pessimism: that in which weakness, weariness, racial décadence are formulated in concepts and values: the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for example, likewise de Vigny's, Dostoyevsky's, Leopardi's, Pascal's, that of all the great nihilistic religions (Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity — they may be called nihilistic because they all glorified the opposite concept of life, nothingness, as the goal, as the highest good, as “God”).

A Critique of Manu:

Reduction of nature to morality: a punitive state of man: there are no natural effects — the cause is Brahman.

Reduction of the human impulses to the fear of punishment and the hope of reward: i.e. before the law, which has both in its hand...

One has to live in absolute conformity with the law: the sensible is done because it is commanded; the most natural instinct is satisfied because the law has prescribed it.

This is a school of stultification [Verdummung]: in such a school of theologians (where even the young military man and farmer must undergo a nine-year course in theology in order to become “constant” — the nine-year “military service” of the three highest castes) the Chandalas must have had intelligence and even interest for themselves. They were the only ones who had access to the true source of knowledge, to empiricism... Add to this the inbreeding of the castes...

Nature, technology, history, art, science, --- are missing.

One thing is most difficult to forgive: that one respects oneself. Such a being is simply abominable: he brings to light what tolerance, the only virtue of the rest and of all, is all about...

I wanted people to start by respecting themselves: Everything else follows from that.

212.

[According to Brahmanism:]

The destiny of the woman is to continue the family through children, that of the man to beget them: this double duty, for which man and woman are active together, has its sanctification in Scripture.

Who are to be regarded as the most guilty? The murderer of a Brahmin, the drinker of spirits [liquor], the one who seduces the wife of his spiritual counselor

After the prescribed expiation, he shall sentence them to death or other corporal punishment. He shall stigmatize the forehead of the one who has seduced the wife of his counselor with the image of the female genitalia, the drinker of spirits with the sign of the distillation instrument, the murderer of a Brahmin with the image of a body without a head.

213.

Such a code [Manusmriti etc] sums up the experience, wisdom and experimental morality of long centuries: it concludes, it ends an epoch, it creates nothing more —

The means of giving authority to a hard and costly acquired truth are fundamentally different from the means by which one would prove it. A code of laws never proves the utility and the disadvantage of a rule: it only shows the bad consequences for the individual if he does not keep a law as a law, — if he disobeys it.

All the natural bad consequences of breaking a law are never considered in terms of this naturalness: but the bad consequence is a supernatural punishment for not obeying a precept.

The problem is this: at a certain moment in the history of the people, its most intelligent stratum declares the experience of living or not living to be complete. Their aim is to bring the harvest home as rich and complete as possible from the long periods of experiment and bad experience...

What is now to be prevented above all is re-experimentation, the desire to continue in testing and selection: this is opposed by a double wall 1) revelation 2) tradition. Both are sacred lies: the intelligent state that invents them understands them as well as Plato understood them.

Revelation: this is the assertion that the reason of those laws is not of human origin, not sought and found slowly and with mistakes, but that it was communicated all at once by the Godhead...

Tradition: this is the assertion that it has been so since time immemorial. Enough, a fundamental falsification of the whole history of a people. (Example of the Jewish reinterpretation after the exile, — the misunderstanding [Missverstehenwollen] of their past)

a) it is godless to criticize the law

b) it is impious, — it is a crime against the ancestors — one incites them against oneself —

214.

[according to Brahmanism:]

The wife who pushes her husband away because he has a passion for gambling or spirituous liquors, instead of nursing him like a sick man, shall be confined for three months in the inner chambers, without any finery or adornment (avis to George Eliot!)

215.

Transfiguration of the natural consequences of an action

there are no more natural consequences: but disobedience is punished, and virtue is rewarded.

happiness, long life, progeny — all are consequences of virtue, mediated by the eternal order of things —

uncleanness, for example, is forbidden, not because its consequences are detrimental to health: but because it is forbidden, it is detrimental to health...

* *

Thus, principally: the natural consequence of an action is represented as reward or punishment, depending on whether something is commanded or forbidden...

for this it is necessary that the greatest number of punishments are not natural, but supernatural, otherworldly, merely of the future...

* *

Thus, in principle: every calamity, every misfortune is proof of guilt: even every low form of existence (the animals, for example)

The world is perfect: provided that the law is satisfied. All imperfection comes from disobedience to the law.

* * *

The highest caste, as the perfect one, has also to represent happiness: therefore nothing is more inappropriate than pessimism and indignation...

no anger, no retort to evil —

asceticism only as a means to higher happiness, to salvation from many things

the upper class has to maintain a happiness at the price of displaying unconditional obedience, every kind of harshness, self-constraint and severity against itself — it wants to be perceived as the most honorable kind of human being, — also as the most admirable: consequently it cannot need every kind of happiness —

Critique of the [brahminical] law.

The higher reason of such a procedure is to push the consciousness back step by step from the life recognized as right: so that a perfect automatism of instinct is attained...

It is pious, it is customary, it is the badge of good and high-minded men to act thus and thus: — that remains:
the origin, the usefulness, the reasonableness of the precept is repressed from consciousness.

The most essential means of this suppression is that two other concepts come to the fore with tremendous force: both excluding the actual reflection on the origin and the criticism of the law...

1) the reward
2) the punishment

“Every man who has received a punishment for an offense by order of the king goes to heaven free from all defilement, just as pure as he who has always practiced only what is good.”

It becomes a matter of supreme self-preservation, of “one [thing] is necessary”, to obey absolutely here... It is re-stamped as the highest imprudence not to obey here —

Egoism is drawn into play in such a way that obedience and disobedience confront each other like happiness and deepest self-sacrifice

To this end, the whole of life is placed in an afterlife perspective, so that it is understood to be momentous in the most terrifying sense...

— relative immortality is the great magnifying glass to magnify the concept of punishment… reward beyond measure.