The Philosophy of Friedrich NietzscheMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900; Philosophy, German -- 19th century
_Liberty._--The worth of a thing often lies, not in what one attains by
it, but in the difficulty one experiences in getting it. The struggle
for political liberty, for example, has done more than any other one
thing to develop strength, courage and resourcefulness in the human
race, and yet liberty itself, as we know it today, is nothing more or
less than organized morality, and as such, is necessarily degrading and
degenerating. "It undermines the will to power, it levels the racial
mountains and valleys, it makes man small, cowardly and voluptuous.
Under political liberty the herd-animal always triumphs." But the very
fight to attain this burdensome equality develops the self-reliance
and unconformity which stand opposed to it, and these qualities often
persist. Warfare, in brief, makes men fit for real, as opposed to
political freedom. "And what is freedom? The will to be responsible for
one's self. The will to keep that distance which separates man from
man. The will to become indifferent to hardship, severity, privation
and even to life. The will to sacrifice men to one's cause and to
sacrifice one's self, too.... The man who is truly free tramples under
foot the contemptible species of well-being dreamt of by shop-keepers,
Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man
is a warrior.... How is freedom to be measured? By the resistance
it has to overcome--by the effort required to maintain it. We must
seek the highest type of freemen where the highest resistance must be
constantly overcome: five paces from tyranny, close to the threshold of
thraldom.... Those peoples who were worth something, who became worth
something, never acquired their greatness under political liberty.
Great danger made something of them--danger of that sort which first
teaches us to know our resources, our virtues, our shields and swords,
our genius--which compels us to be strong."[10]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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